Page 8 - 2007/08 AMA Winter
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against a background of increasing operational com mitments. Some important lessons have been learnt dur ing the planning, organising and fundraising for this mas sive project (believe me, the climbing is the easy part!).
Planning
The High Risk and Remote category, as defined by the AT system, covers a wide range of our activities, therefore necessitating the development of in depth contingency plans. This is good practise and expedition leaders should look on this process as their ‘reali ty ’ check, enabling them to expose their plan to a panel of experts who can identify if any areas need further work. The
AMA Committee can assist leaders in this process, as many have intimate knowl edge of it, either sitting as
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) or having been through the process themselves.
Organising
Fundraising
Fundraising can be more com plicated when expeditions con sist of personnel from more than one unit. The AMA Committee again can assist and we will shortly be publishing a pro gramme of activities, showing what type of expeditions we wish to support in which years and seeking leaders with aspira tions in those areas whom we can support. The advantage of
sponsors, who likewise can use our forecast to determine which activities they may wish to support.
The Future
We hope this more strategic approach to planning and funding activities will encour age AMA members to come forward to lead exciting exploratory expeditions, know ing the Committee can assist them in all aspects of prepara tion. This will ensure we can continue to offer our members these exciting opportunities.
Conclusion
So, we continue in our tradi tional activities, celebrating 50 years of achievement, but looking forward to exciting new challenges as well. Just as it should be, and let us look forward to the next 50 years of achievement.
6 ARMY MOUNTAINEER
As the Army becomes smaller
and com m itm ents remain
high, it is ever more important
to ensure expedition lead in
tim es are long enough to
enable personnel to organise
suitable time off for training
and participation. This is
especially important for longer
expeditions. A crucial part of this is that we will have forecast this is publicising the expedi
tion early and this can best be done via the AMA website, now under new and more effective m anagem ent, the results of which should be apparent soon as we complete migration to the Army Net. This is accessible to retired members as well, see the arti cle on the website elsewhere in the Journal.
these fundraising bids to the appropriate authorities before hand, thus smoothing the way for fundraising from service sources.
Following the success of com mercial fundraising through sponsorship for Shisha Pangma, we are also engaging in a process of building part nerships with commercial
