2010 AASSA Annual General Meeting

This year’s Annual General Meeting will be held in Canmore on Saturday, May 1st and Sunday, May 2nd, 2010. Please note that the registration deadline for all sessions, meals and hotel rooms is Thursday, April 15th.  A club registration form will be sent to the club presidents and once completed, should be sent to the AASSA office. 

Weekend Schedule
We hope that the weekend is enjoyable, as well as informative to all. An updated schedule will be posted in the AASSA Enews following the Executive Planning Sessions being held April 9-11.

Saturday, May 1st
7:30 a.m.- 9:00 a.m. Breakfast (incl. for all AGM delegates)
9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Meetings & Workshops
6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Canmore Club Night

Sunday, May 2nd
7:30 a.m.- 9:00 a.m. Breakfast (incl. for all AGM delegates)
9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. AASSA AGM

As noted a number of meetings and workshops will be held on Saturday. It is asked that a club representative be in attendance at each session and be ready to discuss the proposed items. Any recommendations or decisions arising from these meetings will be voted upon at the AGM on Sunday morning.

Accommodation & Travel
AASSA will pay the travel, accommodation and conference fee costs for each AASSA Executive member and for one representative from each club to attend the meeting. However, these individuals must confirm their attendance/accommodation by contacting the AASSA office. Please use your good judgment and car pool to help reduce our costs and remember to keep your receipts so you can complete an expense claim form before returning home.

The host hotel is; Radisson Hotel & Conference Centre
511 Bow Valley Trail, Canmore, AB
403-678-3625

A block of rooms has been booked for AASSA delegates at a rate of $120 (based on double occupancy) plus taxes, per night. A delegate conference fee will also be applicable which will cover meals and breaks for the weekend.

Club Report & Proposals
AASSA is required to submit detailed information to Speed Skating Canada and the Alberta Recreation, Sport, Parks and Wildlife Foundation at the end of each season. To assist with this task, each club is required to send a completed club report to the AASSA office by Thursday, April 15th. AASSA Executive member reports, proposals and any additions to the AGM are also due by this date.

AASSA Elections
Elections for all AASSA Executive positions will take place at the AGM on Sunday morning.

 

Local Skater Heading to Tunisia

Hello!

On Thursday I (Jill Gilday) am heading to Tunisia to take part in an expedition to raise awareness for the world water crisis with an organisation call impossible2Possible (i2P). Back in January I applied and was chosen as one of four youth ambassadors from across North America to join Ray Zahab, i2P’s founder and a few other ultra-running greats to participate in this adventure. We will be spending ten days running and trekking across the Sahara Desert in Tunisia. Over the ten days we will run between 20 and 30 kilometres per day and cover approximately 300 kilometres.

As an organisation, impossible2Possible seeks to educate, inspire and empower youth through adventure and therefore we will be sharing our journey with over 10,000 students from Canada and the US through daily blogs, photos and video updates. With a few lucky classes, we will also be communicating via live video chat (we will be using the same technology as news correspondents reporting from remote areas in the world).

I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of this expedition. I can hardly describe the amount of excitement that I felt when I received the email informing me that I had been chosen. Let me assure you that there was much screaming, jumping up and down and running around in celebration. For the next week I felt as though, even when I wasn’t smiling, that my body was emitting a constant flow of happiness and positive energy.

I would like to invite you to come on this expedition with me! Each of the four youth ambassadors, myself included will be blogging and uploading pictures on a daily basis. The video updates will be posted on the website and CNN International’s ‘The Backstory’ will be giving updates on our journey twice daily for the duration.

The website for our expedition is www.runningtunisia.com and impossible2Possible’s website is www.impossible2possible.com. Our trip is the second stage of expeditions raising awareness for the water crisis and you can check out the first stage, where Ray Zahab and Kevin Vallely crossed Lake Baikal in Siberia at www.siberianx.com.

The journey begins on Wednesday, April 14th, when our team will meet up in Montreal. There is already lots of info posted on our website including the educational modules that we will be covering with students and team bios (http://impossible2possible.com/tunisia/?s=event_info&e=team_tunisia ).

I hope that you enjoy following along and if you have any questions, feel free to email me (jill_gilday@hotmail.com) prior to the 14th (we will not have email access while running) or to post questions on the website once we are on our way!

Thanks,
 

Jill Gilday