IE’s management plan for 2016 focuses on membership development. To deliver it, we want IE members to act as coordinators; check our tasks, join our circle and share our joy of nurturing IE’s blossoming and growth.

Looking for a job opportunity? Not necessarily a paid one, but one where you have the chance to make a highly-valued contribution and play a key role in Interpret Europe’s future? Membership development is one of our strategic goals and to achieve it, we’d like to develop management units that are driven by dedicated members.

In March, we signed our first volunteer contract with Valya Stergioti from Greece. Valya stepped forward and agreed to act as our training coordinator for the next two years. You can read about her activities in this newsletter. So, what else do we have on offer?

Our first key objective is to ensure IE is not dependent on external funding. This means doubling the membership numbers in 2016. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Perhaps, but it can only be achieved with your help.

There are various ways to do this:

1.    We want to set up country teams to act as national contact points and commit to recruiting new members in their countries. Do you want to be part of this in your country?

2.    We want to increase the number of organisation members and individual members connected to such organisations can play a key role here. Can you coordinate this for us?

3.    Are you a university student? Would you be willing to persuade your faculty to become an IE member? We have some ideas on how to do this. Would you like to play a coordinating role?

4.    We want to increase corporate member numbers by inviting our suppliers for panels, costumes, apps, etc. to become IE members. Would you like to take responsibility for this?

5.    All training certification course participants become IE members, but to have participants we first need certified trainers. How about joining our summer course for guide trainers?

6.    Communication is key and we work on a news system to extend our channels. Ten members are involved – but we need experienced coordinators. Are you willing and able to jump in?

7.    Are you familiar with Wikipedia? As one step to increasing our profile, we want to publish our English Wikipedia article in more languages. Can you take this on?

There is much more besides and we will tell you about this at our General Assembly. There are lots of smaller jobs too that need done, and there are few other organisations like IE where members are as responsive and committed as you. However, to grow IE’s volunteer management, we need reliable coordinators, members taking care of our different units and this is what these seven points highlight.

Do please get in touch with us if you think you can help out and coordinate one of the areas mentioned above. Send us an email or talk to us in Mechelen (and ideally pre-arrange a date and time). Let us share the joy of making IE bloom and grow.

Willem Derde and Thorsten Ludwig are the Managing Directors of Interpret Europe. Willem works for Herita, in Flanders (Belgium), while Thorsten runs Bildungswerk interpretation, in Germany. You can get in touch with them at wderde@interpret-europe.net and tludwig@interpret-europe.net.

To cite this article:
Ludwig, T., Derde, W. (2016) ‘Rewarding opportunities from our management plan’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 1-2016, 4
Available online:
https://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2016-1_spring.pdf