ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

AGENDA

1. Open and Welcome
2. Acceptance of previous minutes
3. Chairman's report
4. Treasurer's report
5. Secretary's report
6. Nominations and election of new committee
7. Membership fees
8. General
9. Closing by new Chairman

Open and Welcome

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Acceptance of previous minutes

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Chairman's report

On behalf of the executive committee for the 1996/1997 term I have the pleasure in presenting to you the chairman's annual report.

The past year was full of ups and downs for the committee of Dosco ES Gijimas but I am sure we come out stronger after each set-back. The year started with threatening legal action from the previous chairman regarding the purchase of running pants. With the back-up of my committee I had to take some difficult decisions that made me very unpopular with some of our ex-members, but I want to assure each and every one of you it was done with the club's best interest at heart, and not the satisfaction of individuals.

Early in the season the Vice Chairman resigned from his position due to personal reasons and in the latter part of the year the Club Captain also resigned. These resignations did put some stress on the remaining committee members as the workload now got spread over a smaller base. I am sure however that the members out there did not feel any drop in service to themselves because of the hard work put in by the remainder of the committee.

The membership dropped dramatically in the beginning of the year but started to pick up during the year and at the time of the report we were 169 members. Due to lack of sponsorship we did not organise the night race as in previous years, mainly because the club made a loss of nearly R2000.00 the previous year when the race was held without a sponsor.

In retrospect, this has proved to be a rather challenging, yet successful year.

Executive committee

The Dosco Gijimas committee for last year was:

The committee met on 13 occasions namely:

12 monthly meetings

1 General meeting

In addition to these meetings, many ad hoc meetings as well as sub-committee meetings were convened to deal with matters elated to away races and general club administration. In spite of the high demand for time that was placed on the committee members they still participated in the sport themselves and I congratulate them on this focused approach they adopted.

Finance

At present the club has a healthy bank balance and clothing that will bring in money in future. With the uncertainty of sponsorship after 1998 (the current main sponsor has only agreed in writing for 3 years, ending November 1998) the committee adopted the attitude of saving up reserves in the event that sponsorship may not be positively negotiated or re-negotiated.

I have to thank Lyn for the hard work and time put in to assure that the club is in such a healthy financial position. More information will be available in the treasurer's report.

The clubs sponsorship that assured the annual activities were mainly from:

• DOSCO ETS (Ken Barnard)
• Paul Cook & Associates

Administration

In the past the admin function was the sole responsibility of the secretary. Because our secretary was new to this function, and had a load of new responsibilities in his private life, we shared some of the responsibilities between the secretary, treasurer, vice chairman and myself. We trust that the members were not inconvenienced by these actions.

Newsletter

The newsletter was again our communication vehicle with our members, and we even started using the E-mail system of distributing the newsletter thereby saving the club more money. It is a pity that more members did not utilise the newsletter to share information with the club. The club can even boast with out own Web site, thanks to Moshe Waisberg.

Highlights

The highlight of the year was when we officially opened out clubhouse. For the first time in this club's existence (even when we were Eskom Gijimas) we have a clubhouse, thanks to Donald Mellors. This clubhouse has resulted in members sticking around after time trials for a general chat and what not. We can hold our meetings in our clubhouse and not run around looking for suitable venues.

Other highlights were our trips down to Two Oceans and Comrades. We took down a busload of runners and supporters to Two Oceans and to Comrades. Team spirit was built on these trips and the club gained recognition with Michael Voudouris running a first silver medal in a Dosco vest at the Comrades.

General

The club's internal competition was again administered by Keith and will be covered by him in his feedback. I want to thank Keith for all the work he put in to have this competition, but it would appear he does not mind since he won a major portion of the events.

Apart from Two Oceans and Comrades we also had members running the Foot this year. Although the group was smaller than in the past, the result was better with one of our ladies, Yvonne Rafalski bringing back a silver medal in the marathon in a time of 3 hours 28 minutes. One of our master ladies, Anneth Coetzer ensured that the club's name appeared in the race results under gold medals by winning two races in this category.

Cross country was so badly supported that the club is rethinking affiliating to the cross country body next year.

Time trials have improved since we have a clubhouse and we have had as many as 37 runners on one evening. Non-club members have also been attending out time trials, which is considered as a "not so easy route." Two of the outside members have become so used to our club because of the time trial that they intend joining us in the new year.

Tents were made available at no less than 86 races during the year. Sausage runs were again held on a monthly basis and at the last one, fresh sandwiches with health foods in lace of sausage were introduced with success. Now we can honestly say we cater for all our members, even the vegetarians. To ensure the safety of the members' tog bags at races we had our old tent (never utilised because it was bulky) transformed into a massive bag for the safekeeping of our tog bags.

Four very successful family days were held during the year. The first at the opening of our clubhouse, the next with a long training run held in Heidelberg and a splendid meal where catering was done by Ta and Annerien, wives of Christo Oberholzer and Joe Pretorius. The third family day was again our Aches and Pains party at the house of our sponsor Ken Barnard. Our last family day was at the Jhb. Zoo recently and again the spirit of Gijimas was clear when wives of members without the slightest hesitation jumped in and started helping. This is the type of attitude that makes this club the envy of so many clubs out there.

The club has not only grown in membership during the year, it has also grown in stature and the friendship and camaraderie has practically made this club like a big family for the members.

Acknowledgements

I want to make use of this opportunity to thank the members of the executive committee for the unselfish support, hard work and patients with me during the year. This thank you also goes to the two members that resigned their positions on the committee during the year for their work prior to them resigning. Without the dedication and hard work from these members, you as the runners out there would not have had the smooth functioning club that you enjoyed during the year. I would also like to thank the ordinary members out there that encouraged me and supported me during my year as chairman. I trust that you will support the next chairman in the same manner and means that I have become accustomed to.

Lastly I want to thank Lyn for being there all the time when I was not at my best and she had to hear my ranting and raving when I could not get things done fast enough in the best interests of our club.

DAVE DE BRUIN
CHAIRMAN DOSCO ETS GIJIMAS

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Treasurer's report

I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support during my term of office, please support the new committee in the same way.

On behalf of the Executive Committee and our runners I thank Ken Barnard from Dosco ETS, our Main sponsor and Paul Cook for their support during the last two years, with their donations we have managed to keep the Gijimas running.

I sincerely hope that we will still be running as Dosco after 1998 as this club has now made a name for it and is known as a friendly club.

Last year I opened a special savings account and this has been generating income for the club.

We also managed to save some income on the Two Oceans and Comrades trips due to us obtaining discounted costs for the use of the buses - we have to thank Donald Mellors for his efforts.

We have income due to us for licenses that have been returned to CGA, we will probably receive this money in the new year.

This year we purchased shorts, vets and crop tops and these are now available.

My thanks go to Mrs L. Barry for doing a very thorough auditing job of my books.

I can now hand over to my successor with confidence and know that I have improved the status of the club's funds.

I wish the new Executive committee the best of luck and a very successful year. You will have my support,

Regards,
Lyn de Bruin
The Treasurer

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Secretary's report

I'd like to start by thanking my fellow committee members for the help they gave me through the year. I've had a very busy personal schedule and the club may have been affected if it was not for their help.

33 Official letters were sent out by the club with a number of other letters being passed out for club related matters (e.g. Operation Bright-sight).

Correspondence in was plentiful - however, we did have some problems with mail being received late from CGA. This was raised at the AGM of CGA where we received confirmation of this from other clubs. Hopefully this will not be a problem again in the future.

Twelve newsletters were sent out during the year. Apparently some members had problems with receiving them. We use normal mail, internal Eskom mail and P-Mail as mediums for sending the newsletters out. We will have to address this in some way in future to ensure ALL club members receive their letters. It will however help if the members let us know sooner about such problems so that we can rectify the situation quicker.

The club tent was well used this year, being at no less than 86 events. While the attendance at some races was rather poor, we have seen a definite increase in attendance in recent weeks. I attribute this largely to the events and happenings around "Nick's Dream."

The club championships went very well throughout the year. Some categories were however not contested in the club championships. It was good to see some new faces receiving awards. The last race (to date) proved to be the highlight of the year. Nine athletes from the club finished the tough 15 km event within seven minutes of each other - all within 69 minutes (eight within 4.5 minutes). This is how all club championships should be.

This year we introduced the idea of awarding T-shirts to the top 10 finishers (as an afterthought) in both the long and short distance challenges (both which still have to be finalised). Hopefully this will be an ongoing initiative and should encourage more of our athletes to attend more of the races.

On we go now into the eighth year of this club's existence. I wish all the best for the club into the future and elected or not, will give my supper to the new committee.

See you on the road

Keith Reynolds
Secretary

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Nominations and election of new committee

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Membership fees

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General

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Closing by new Chairman

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		© 2003, Dosco E.T.S. Gijimas