2009 Annual Meeting – Go Green, Save Green and Carpool
The second Annual Meeting of Girl Scouts of West Central Florida will be Saturday morning, April 18, at the new Phyllis Marshall Student Center at the University of South Florida.

We’re excited to be one of the first events in the new Marshall Center, which just recently opened. The state-of-the-art facility has a huge ballroom, great A/V capabilities and large rooms that will accommodate our pre-meeting forums nicely.

Speaking of forums, this year’s forums will deal with topics that are close to our board members’ hearts. One forum will be presented by board members who have been planning for our future based on our resources and the input we received from those who attended last year’s Annual Meeting forums. The second forum will be concerned with our financial position – definitely a topic of immediate interest.

And this year we’ll have a special pre-meeting activity also during the forum times. It’s called Story Weaving. What’s that? At the National Council Session in Indianapolis, several of our girls and volunteers took the opportunity to participate in story weaving, where they had their hands-on in creating beautiful works of textile art built while weaving their Girl Scout stories together. Those volunteers and girls wanted to offer the same opportunity to you, so it will be a special forum of sorts, and we hope you will want to participate.

Plan now to carpool to the Annual Meeting. Although there is plenty of parking near the Marshall Center, you will have to pay to park and if you don’t already have a parking pass for USF, you’ll have to stop briefly at the visitor’s center on the way in, and get a parking ticket from the machine. Since we’ve been Girl Scouts of West Central Florida, our logistics requirements for the Annual Meeting are B-I-G and there aren’t many venues in our eight counties that can meet our space and technical needs. Sometimes we accept a minimal inconvenience for the overall benefit of the location. We hope you will carpool – it’s the green thing to do anyway – and plan a couple extra minutes and dollars for parking.

The Call to Annual Meeting was sent to all voting delegates and Area Association chairs in mid-March. This year there were two changes we hope are useful to you:

1. At the recent Area Association meeting, delegates were given the opportunity to sign up for an electronic Call to Annual Meeting in an e-mailed PDF file. The e-Call was transmitted the same day the paper Call to Meeting was mailed. If you’re a voting delegate and you signed up to receive an e-Call, pay special attention to your e-mail box and even your spam box to make sure you received your Call to Annual Meeting timely.
2. We sent a mini-call to alternate delegates and service unit managers who aren’t already delegates or alternate delegates. It had basic info – agenda, location, directions, etc., but not all the governance documents. This is something volunteers requested in last year’s feedback and we were delighted to give it a try. Let us know if you find it helpful.

Of course, you don’t have to be a voting delegate, alternate delegate or service unit manager to attend the Annual Meeting. It is open to all registered Girl Scouts age 14 and above, and we hope you will set aside Saturday morning, April 18.

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Are You “Area Chair” Material? Are You “Into” Girl Scout Governance?
Under our council by-laws, area association chairs have term limits, and we will need to replace several of our very dedicated area chairs this summer. Being an area association chair doesn’t demand a lot of time on an every-week basis, but there are definite expectations and responsibilities. You’ll want to carefully review the area association chair position description to see if you would want to take on the task.

We are seeking chairs for the following areas:

B – Northern Pinellas/Western Hillsborough/Southwest Pasco
C – Central Pinellas
E – Central Hillsborough and South Tampa
G – East/South Hillsborough
J – Western Polk/Northeast Hillsborough

We have some great candidates in a couple of the areas, but we want to give everyone who is interested a chance to be considered. If you’re active in governance and can see yourself as an area chair, contact Kathy Sandy: (813) 262-1771.