Larry:

Thanks for a quick response in your usual hard-hitting style. I wasn't calling for a "statement," I was calling for action.

I was on the board for 5 years and could never see a reason why we could not do this. I asked and asked and never received a response. I volunteered, gratis, to lead groups of volunteers to hard-hit parts of the world to help in this and never received a response from our Executive Committe or ARMA about resource availability. No one ever bothered to find out from our members whether this was something they were willing to do. I even researched models for doing this and found some very helpful ways of creating, financing, and leading these types of helpful missions.

Organizing such an engagement takes some planning, but so does responding to Congress. What is wrong with responding to a disaster in our own country? When the Ohio River flooded several years ago, several of the neighboring ARMA Chapters put on seminars on disaster recovery for business leaders. If we have that much energy, why not channel it to something we can all agree needs to be done?

What are the benefits? Most people are up the creek without a paddle because they are not only unable to return to their homes, many of which are destroyed, but their only source of income is disaster relief. Why not help these people get back on their feet quicker by lending a hand at some of businesses and government agencies?

Larry, you volunteer untold hours to ARMA and this listserv because that is what you have the time and energy to do. Would you now deny other people an outlet for their own volunteer activities?

Yes, we are going in a better direction now and I have been an integral part of that. 8 years ago I began campaigning for competencies and when our consultant mentioned them, everyone knew what those were thanks to my leadership on the EDC. We have responsible communication because I harangued the board about their lack of communication with the members. We are finally focusing on our lack of representation in IT decisions in part because I founded and pushed the Technology Advisory Council and spent untold hours educating HQ and the board what IT means within our association. We now have some idea what international direction we want to go because I harangued the board that they needed to put money and commitment into it or just forget about it.

But this does not mean we cannot do even better. We have greater visibility than before. What better way to get even more than to volunteer our money and time helping our own fellow citizens to get back on their feet?

We have no idea how many volunteers we could get to help because we have never asked. We have never even tried.

Best wishes,
Carol

Carol E.B. Choksy, Ph.D., CRM
CEO
IRAD Strategic Consultant. Inc.
(317) 294-8329

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