New Horizons > December 2000

2000 ECLOF Geneva Board Meets

The 2000 ECLOF Geneva board meeting took place on 21 and 22 November. It was followed by ‘Signs of Hope, Jubilee 2000 and Credit to the Poor’, a joint one-day seminar between ECLOF and Oikocredit.

Honouring Cees Oskam
At the beginning of the meeting, the chairperson, Rev. Dr Christoph Stückelberger, asked the board to stand for a minute’s silence in honour of the late Cees Oskam, Dr Stückelberger’s predecessor as chair, who died last December, shortly after attending his final Geneva board meeting. The board agreed to send a message of support to Cees’ family.

ECLOF minimum standards
While last year’s ECLOF Geneva board meeting was marked by the approval of the global policy guidelines, the major event at the 2000 meeting was the approval of the minimum standards document.

The need for minimum standards arose from the same 1998 managers’ workshop in La Paz, Bolivia, which gave rise to the global guidelines. The NEC managers themselves requested ECLOF Geneva to co-ordinate and facilitate the drawing up of minimum standards.

A first draft was shared with a small group of readers in the ECLOF network. Taking their comments into account, a second draft was then prepared and shared with all the NECs for further reactions.

The minimum standards now laid down apply primarily to NECs with a development capital programme and full-time staff, rather than NECs with only a general capital programme and volunteer staff.

In a review of the plan, it was pointed out to the board that ECLOF would seek to raise US$22 million in new lending capital over the next four years.

Translation of Global Policies
Further to their approval in 1999, the global policy guidelines have been translated into Spanish and French. Ms Daw Aye Kywe, ECLOF Geneva board member in the NEC category from Asia (Myanmar), has also kindly translated the document into Burmese.

A new NEC: ECLOF El Salvador
The board approved the constitution submitted by the formative National ECLOF Committee in El Salvador. This means that ECLOF El Salvador has been officially recognised as a new NEC and will start operations once membership has been finalised.

New and retiring board members
This year, ECLOF welcomed six new members to the board while four members attended their last board meeting before the end of their second and final term.

Joining the board are Jessika Kehl-Lauff and Guillaume Taylor in the Swiss constituency category, Daw Aye Kywe, from Myanmar, who represents the NEC Asia/Pacific constituency, Günter Rath, from Bread for the World in Germany, as a representative in the Agencies category, Elly Vandenberg (Canada) as a representative in the Churches category, and Mariam Yesayan (Armenia) in the NEC category from Europe (see p 18 for more details).

The retiring members are Ernestina Hagan and Pilar Ramirez who represented the NECs from Africa and Latin America respectively, Alois Möller in the Agencies category from Germany and Pierre-André Chaix from Switzerland, who served as ECLOF’s first elected treasurer.

The board expressed its appreciation for the service of its retiring members at the annual ECLOF board dinner, during which special gifts were presented.

Ms Ramirez’s term officially runs until the next Latin America/Caribbean Regional Workshop to be held in Peru this month (December). Ms Hagan’s term will officially end with the next Africa Regional Workshop in spring or early summer of 2001.

The board elected Karen Prudente (USA), who represents USA/Canada in the Agencies category, to succeed Mr Chaix as treasurer.

Mr Günter Rath from Bread for the World in Germany, succeeds Dr Alois Möller as a board member in the Agencies category and as an executive committee member. Mr Rath is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria, Germany, and has a background in banking in Germany, South Africa and Australia. He is now Executive Secretary for Co-ordination at Bread for the World, and previously served for ten years with the World Council of Churches as Director of Income Co-ordination and Development, during which time he represented the WCC on the board of EDCS/Oikocredit from 1996 to 2000. Mr Rath is a former Director of Research at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, where he specialised in international politics with special emphasis on small island states in the Pacific.

Rev. Dr Cristoph Stückelberger, ECLOF Chairperson (left), presents Dr Alois Möller with a gift of appreciation at a special dinner held in his honour during the October meeting of the ECLOF Geneva executive committee. Dr Möller represented the Partner Agencies in Germany, and sat both on the ECLOF board and its executive committee. In addition to these responsibilities, Dr Möller was also part of the ECLOF future working group that drew up Vision, Mission, Global Policies and Guidelines, the official ECLOF document to guide the future of ECLOF. We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our appreciation of Dr Möller’s contribution to the work of ECLOF and to assure him that he will remain part of the ECLOF family.