Congratulations Kathy and Joan. Both received the Excellence in Service Award in July 2021.
Joan has been a member of the Club for quite a number of years and has been a volunteer on the Executive Committee (EC), serving in two different positions; one year as the Vice President and two years as the Web & IT Coordinator. She also co-organises the Tiergarten Walking Group and Pilates classes. Since stepping down from the the EC, Joan agreed to become a member of the Web Team. This was very good news for the Club and it meant that her skills were not lost to us.
For the past two years, Joan has been quietly and diligently working in the background, taking care of the IT needs of the EC, be it helping to purchase new laptops, setting them up with the necessary software, or training new EC members on the use of the BIWC Cloud storage space on OneDrive. This is the BIWC’s archive where all important documents are kept. She ensures that the EC has the necessary licenses for all BIWC laptops and that they are renewed in a timely manner. When required, she has also assisted in getting advertising contracts drawn up.
Kathy has been a member for the past eight years and in that time, she became not only an active volunteer, but she also attended many activities. She served on the EC in the position of Secretary, and prior to that, Vice Secretary. She was always there and willing to assist when needed.
When it came time to set up the 2020/2021 Nominations Committee, she did not hesitate to volunteer when asked to be a member of this group. The Nominations Committee started off with three members, but after only a month, Kathy was the last one “standing”. Instead of saying, “I’ll quit too”, she took on the mammoth task of contacting the members to try to find candidates.
The search for candidates this year was made more difficult as we were not having in person activities and Kathy could not meet up with the members. She took the membership directory to hand and systematically started calling members to find out if anyone was interested in serving on the EC. A thankless job, but she was successful in getting candidates to fill the open EC and non-EC positions.
Joan and Kathy are very worthy recipients of the Excellence in Service Award and ideal role models to inspire other members to follow suite. Thank you both for your untiring dedication.
