Page 24 - Spring 24

2024 President’s letter to the board, for the AGM on April 19th, 2024
Dear all,
The year (and a quarter) has gone by rather quickly. Even so, we’ve accomplished a lot,although it seems difficult to ever do as much as we hope we can do. But first I would like to thank my team of officers, all of whom are giving time for the IAVH, and are a very good working group: (in alphabetical order) Banu Kantarcioglu, Beatrice Milleder, Ilze Pētersone, and Mirjam Blatnik.
The beginning of our term we spent in reorganizing the office. Sam Finley, the prior office manager, realized she was not properly managing our affairs and was unable to do so with the other commitments she has in her life. We then brought in Lavra Kreacic, from Slovenia, who has been great in organizing the membership information as well as handling emails and payments. Mirjam and Lavra have put in many many hours of work in sorting out who had paid and who had not paid, as well as who wishes to be a member (or not). It has been a lot of work to get this information to where we can keep track of this essential data.
Mirjam, our Treasurer, and I have also streamlined our operations quite a bit, eliminating a lot of unnecessary expense. Mirjam has done most of the hands-on work but we’ve discussed this together, along with the other officers. We’ve been able to reduce the expenses by several thousand dollars a year with having a much more
efficient office team and with cancelling completely under-utilized (and not really needed) items like the Zoho office system.
Beatrice, our General Secretary, has begun a newsletter, currently mostly with upcoming educational opportunities, as well as handling the meeting minutes. She welcomes items of interest for the newsletter, and we hope to expand the newsletter over the next couple of years.
Banu, our vice-General Secretary, has assisted with minutes as needed and has worked with the LMHI, as Altunay Agaoglu, a (human) medical doctor, is a colleague of Banu’s in Turkey, so Banu has a good connection to the LMHI. Additionally, Altunay is very welcoming and positive about having the IAVH working with the LMHI. As both IAVH and LMHI are international homeopathic medical organizations, it is a good fit. Banu and I traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, for the annual LMHI meeting, and we have both joined working groups within LMHI. The IAVH will also have a presence in Sevilla, Spain, for the 2024 annual LMHI meeting in the autumn. And last but not least, Ilze, our Latvian Vice-President and former President, is working on our online education, organizing webinars as we can find people to teach. We also hope to begin offering online courses in basic homeopathy, to try to reach more people who may be interested in holistic medical approaches but not have the means to study in their countries.
And this is a good thing, as the practice of homeopathy worldwide is constantly in flux, with membership going up in some areas and down in others. The past few years, with the Covid virus and the political responses to the virus, have had a real impact upon homeopathy, mostly indirectly. Many members have had problems financially and have canceled or withdrawn from a lot of activities as a result. And so we have lost members in some countries like Spain, Argentina (and others), as their national organizations have lost a lot of members.
We also face some situations, like Austria, where the members of their national organization unfortunately has been influenced to cancel IAVH membership due to perceptions of inadequate value as a consequence of there not being so much activity in the previous few years, in part also due to the covid mess.
However, our officer team is optimistic, as other countries are growing, like Slovenia and the Czech Republic, and other countries in Eastern Europe, as people there are wanting more holistic medicine.
So there is an ebb-and-flow, which is normal in any organic systems. We are working to educate more people and provide more resources, so we can spread homeopathic medicine as well as invite members to join or rejoin, as we move forward into the future.
Thanks for reading.
Love from the whole officer team,
Don Hamilton, IAVH President 2023-2026
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Don Hamilton
President, IAVH