Annual General Meeting 2006 to 2007: Chair's Report

Held at Newport Civic Centre 14 June at 7pm

Meetings held at the Newport Civic Centre
After the AGM in June 2006 Newport Kutaisi Association held eight general meetings that largely took place every two months with good attendances. At the September meeting we were delighted to welcome the Joint President of NKA, Newport’s Mayor Cllr Miqdad Al-Nuaimi and Mayoress Mrs Lindsay Al-Nuaimi

Publicity
The one great leap forward for us has been the setting up of a new website www.nkta.org. This was launched in June 2006 and here can be found all our current activities, our past history the how, the when & the why. We have one of the most dramatic, colourful and interesting sites that is devoted to the link the Association & the City of Newport has with the City of Kutaisi and KNIA. This site is being continually updated.

ArielOnline
In order to promote the website, NKA & its news we started to produce a simple newsletter, Arielonline. This we hope will be developed further in the coming year.

Lapel badges
In view of the visit to Kutaisi we have had produced a newly designed & custom made lapel pin depicting our logo together with the Georgian & Welsh flag. These proved to be very popular in Georgia.

Press
Articles with photos have been written for both the press & the website. Despite every effort it still remains very difficult to break into the local press but we remain committed to using this method of raising awareness.
With the recent news that NCC has agreed to the river pedestrian area being named Kutaisi Walk we will not remain unnoticed for long!

Local Democracy Agency Georgia
Assoc. LDAs opened its first office in the Caucasus, in Kutaisi, on 8 September 2006.
We were represented by Newport City Cllr. David Mayer, Clare Evans, NCC Officer for European Affairs and NKA Vice Chair Bernard Tyson.
This Kutaisi LDA office, with a newly democratically appointed delegate/manager, will focus on the participation of citizens in the decision-making process, the strengthening of local democracy and the promotion of human and minority rights.
It will have, like the other eleven LDA offices in South East Europe, a solid European and local partnership support. The cities involved in the activities for the next three years are: Newport City Council who was named as the lead partner, Strasbourg (France); Monfalcone (Italy); Nantes (France); Kaunas (Lithuania). ALDA logo?
At a local level, both the cities of Kutaisi and Tbilisi, the National Association of Local Authorities, the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and our sister Twinning Association in Kutaisi all support the LDA. It is very likely that in time other international and national partners will join the network of the Agency.
In October a meeting was held in Newport attended by the LDA Delegate Joseph Khakhaleishvili (Soso), Antonella Valmorbida, Director of ALDA and representatives of ALDA, NKA & Newport City Council as part of JK’s training programme Pic of Soso?
It is very early days and we wish them well in what lies ahead. Go to report

Everychild project
The Training Team of Newport’s Social Services Dept undertook to organise a nine day intensive training programme in Newport in June of 2006 for a team of five key social workers from Georgia, three from Kutaisi. (referred to briefly in the Chair’s report AGM 2006). Go to report
They learnt of the new legislations that are being brought in by the Welsh Assembly and the provision for children in care – a wide-ranging course.
They met with the Care Standards Inspectorate for Wales together with Welsh Assembly members in Cardiff, representatives of the National Occupational Standards for Social Workers, the Assistant Children’s Commissioner and they reviewed the Social Work

Degree programme at University of Wales, Newport.
We are grateful to both Newport City Council and the University for their cooperation and support.
It proved highly successful and we look forward now to maintaining the momentum.

Photographic Journalist
In February it was agreed to fund British born Onnik Krikorian, a well established & highly experienced photographic journalist to travel to Kutaisi to cover the progress being made with the new governmental Child Welfare reforms that are being put into place – to cover the work of the Education & Social Services Dept of Kutaisi, to depict a positive & respectful picture of daily life of social workers who work with children who are being returned to their birth homes, or being placed into foster care or adoption. Their placement in orphanages was often due to poverty - the inability of families to feed their children.
He travelled from his home base of Yerevan, Armenia to Kutaisi staying 5 days. This has resulted in us receiving a large set of photographs, an audio visual presentation, a written article, accreditation/acknowledgement of NKA on Eurasianet website and his own wide network system.
It remains now for us to utilise this material over the coming months. His material has already been widely distributed throughout EveryChild NGO, again accreditation always being given to NKA. Link to audio presentation? Go to Onnik's website

Georgian Post Graduate Scholarship
We welcomed in September Veronica Pochkhua from Kutaisi who joined us to start a MSc in IT Management under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding.

Georgian Studies Day
This year the GSD was held on 4th December at the University of Westminster. Four members representing NKA attended, Vera Brown, Sylvia Mason and I together with Veronica Pochkhua, our postgraduate student. This was a very successful day with the new Georgian Ambassador H.E. Ambassador Gela Charkviani addressing the meeting. I made a PowerPoint presentation outlining NKA’s recent activities together with our aims & objectives as a twinning association. Go to report

British-Georgian Society
Decision was taken to rejoin this society. It helps to keep us informed of Anglo-Georgian matters both culturally & politically. We receive regular news of their events which often gives us ideas for our own social calendar since so many BGS events are London based making it difficult to attend.

Visit to Kutaisi
A delegation of four members of the Association made a highly successful visit to Kutaisi in May. They represented the Association with the aim to strengthen friendship links with our sister Association KNIA and also to explore ideas for further twinning activities.
A presentation of the visit is being made at this AGM. Go to report

Retirement of Geoff Edge Pro Vice-Chancellor (Regional Development) of the University of Wales Newport.
It was with regret that Geoff Edge announced his retirement and resignation from being an active member of the NKA committee. We wished him well and expressed our appreciation for all the support he had given us over the past five years.

Social Calendar
We are now beginning to establish a good series of social occasions centred on invited speakers.
November ‘Excavations at Vani’ – Dr. Darejan Kacharava- Caerleon Legionary Museum
Jan ‘Georgian Icons’ - Fr Deniol - St Woolos Cathedral - in aid of cathedral restoration
Feb ‘Cruciform shapes in Early Christian Art’ - Manana Vickers - YMCA – in aid of child welfare
April ‘Japanese Prints’ in the YMCA – Derek Butler – in aid of child welfare
May Cheese & Wine in the Mansion House by kind invitation of the Mayor –– in aid of child welfare

Apart from fundraising these evenings proved to be very successful by widening the circle of people who attended, raising awareness of the twinning association and encouraging membership.
The purchase of a digital projector and screen was made to assist in promotional events such as these.

My thanks go to Newport City Council & its representatives whose valued support of this Association is very much appreciated and extremely hard to measure.

Also my thanks go to Bernard Tyson as Vice Chair, Vera Brown as Secretary, Sonia Fisher as Treasurer for their continued support & very valuable advice, always freely given. They have carried out their roles superbly giving excellent support to me in particular and the Association in general.

Thanks to all the members & friends of NKA and representatives of other organisations who have given so much of their time in planning and organising events, building & developing projects, raising funds - all of which goes towards helping to promote the Association here in Newport and strengthen the links with the City of Kutaisi and Kutaisi Newport Twinning Association.

Together I look forward to a very successful 2007-08

Catherine Philpott Chair
01633 421103
caer.leon@yahoo.co.uk
14th June 20th 2007