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General Assembly 2019

From Wikimedia Belgium

Minutes of the General Assembly (GA) of Wikimedia Belgium vzw/asbl 2019.

Minutes of the General Assembly (details)

Venue

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Saturday 15/06/2019 at 14:00

Troonstraat 51 Rue du trône, Brussels

Present

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Only Effective members have voting rights.

Current board members

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  1. Romaine (board member)
  2. Geertivp (chairman)
  3. Lionel Scheepmans (board member)
  4. .Anja. (board member)
  5. Alberto (board member)

As effective members

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  1. Spider (talk)

Votes by Proxy

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Effective members who can't be present can give a proxy to a trustee. Only 1 proxy per member allowed. Request via: info@wikimedia.be.

Voter Owns a proxy for
Romaine LeFagnard
Lionel Scheepmans MADe

New candidate effective members

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Have indicated the wish to become an effective member:

  1. Kvardek du (not present - Wikimedia workshops in Paris at the same time)
  2. Taketa (talk) 14:38, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Paul Hermans
  4. Ciell
  5. Vinciane Lacroix
  6. LeFagnard

The Board, with 5 of 6 board members present, accepts those 6 new effective members.

Associate members

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Associate members can attend the meeting but do not have voting rights.

  1. Dominique Labar
  2. Rony Vissers

Excused

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  1. Robin

Decision making

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For valid decisions a majority of n/2 + 1 votes are necessary.

There are 10 effective members represented, and 2 proxy voters, so we require 7 votes to have majority and approval of decisions.

We appoint Ciell & Spider as vote counter. .Anja. is voluntary secretary/report taker.

2018 activities

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See Activities.

Annual Accounts 2018

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Remarks:

  • The EXPS code needs to be relabeled as "Onkostennota's" instead of "Diverse uitgaven"
  • Geert explains that all transactions are done via the bank account; either via invoice payments, or expense claim payments. There are no bank cards, nor credit cards, nor cash payments to be sure to not have unfunded transactions.
  • Ciell proposes for next year to create a "Rekeningencommissie" (Accounts Committee). Ciell and Spider are candidate. Spider and Ciell are appointed by the GA to audit the 2019 bank transactions and general ledger.
  • The aggregate expenses are better based on projects. Geert shows that this is done in the Foundation report. There can be some difference between the Annual Accounts, and the Foundation annual report; the annual account is calendar based from 1 January till 31 December, with a possibility for provisions, while the Foundation report is based on the sAPG and the project grants, which can be shifted from the calendar year.

Voting to discharge the board: 12 agree to discharge (none against, no abstention). The Annual Accounts are accepted and the board is hereby discharged.

Budget 2019

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We received from WMF a grant of 16.500 € for 2019, the same amount as in 2018. Due to the 2030 Strategy process (2019 Summit report) the Foundation has frozen the sAPG Affiliates budgets.

Details for WMBE:

Board elections

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WMBE board in 2018
(We forgot to take a new picture)

Association rules

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2019 re-election

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Can continue their 2nd year Board member without re-election:

Have completed their 2nd year Board member, and are candidate for reelection:

Up for re-election:

Prefer to step back as board member:

Candidates - we have a vacancy for 2 new candidates; if you would like to be candidate for board member, please notify the board through info@wikimedia.be.

  • Taketa: Mike Nicolaije was board member of WMNL till 2019

All board member candidates are (re)elected, see /Minutes for details. Geert was appointed as chair by the new board.

Internal Board procedures

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Board members are expected to be active for the Association. They fulfill their role in collaboration and agreement with the other board members and the chairman. They have legal and moral obligations and responsibilities towards the Belgian Government, the Wikimedia Foundation, our members, and to the general public.

2019 activities

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For 2019, we want to continue to grow as Wikimedia Belgium. We received sufficient funding to organise new activities. We want to use this opportunity to explicitly call for volunteers who would be interested in organising activities or projects, and can use financial and logistic support by Wikimedia Belgium for this. So we strongly encourage you to show up to our General Assembly, whether you have an idea to organise or not!

Various topics

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Association
  • Social networks - new French Twitter account, perspectives, others channels

A communications plan is being created.

Legal
Foundation

At the General assembly it was suggested by one of the participants, as a reaction to the verbal report of Romaine, that, in order to bring clarity and objectivity in the general working of the T&S and of the Grants team, legally and technically, a WMF internal audit could be requested about:

  • the way T&S is handling complaints and applies decisions about complaint cases, whether the cases are handled in an objective and neutral way, and to verify whether the rights of defendants are sufficiently guaranteed.
  • how the Grants team handles, evaluates, accepts, or refuses grant requests, and if the Grants team sufficiently applies inter-cultural sensitivity.

The outcome of the internal audit could be a remediation plan, an adapted Safe space policy, and subsequent Trust & Safety procedures.

See m:Request for WMF Internal audits and appeal procedures for more details.

New Board members

Mike proposes that a document "Welcome new Board member" is written.

The meeting was closed at 17:25.

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