Minutes of the Retina Youth meeting

during RI congress in Tokyo, Japan on 4. August, 2002

Section A (Retina International Meeting):

Present:

Christina Fasser (Switzerland) - President of Retina International

Dave Waldron (Ireland) - Member of Managing board of Retina International

Markus Georg (Germany)

Pekka Rantanen (Finland)

Simone Brucker (Germany)

Nathalie van der Wiel (Netherlands)

Anne Berit Gransjoen (Norway)

Brian Boland (USA (living in Japan))

Noreen Power Waldron (Ireland)

Yumi Maekawa (Japan)

Aya Moriguchi (Japan)

Atsushi Fuji (Japan)

Sanae Kusosaki (Japan)

Noriko Wada (Japan)

Ole Soerensen (Denmark)

Contents

1. Opening of the meeting

Christina Fasser as president of Retina International invited all young people which were participating on RI congress in Makuhari Prince Hotel in Chiba, Japan for a meeting.

She welcomed the participants at 9:00 a.m while the congress was going on which effected that some youngsters from other countries could not take part on this meeting.

Afterwards all people started to introduce themselves and their purpose of youth work.

2. Retina International Youth

Christina Fasser explained the reasons for this international youth meeting.

Main purpose of the meeting was the wish from Christina Fasser to build a young leadership program of Retina International combined with an international youth work.

She recommended to set up a sub committee of 3-4 persons. This sub committee should set a policy of youth work for Retina International.

In her opinion it is important that the youth activities were started from young people for young people and not dictated by Retina International.

There are different reasons for young people to join youth group. Not all the people are interested to take a leading part in their RP organization. They only looking for other youngsters because in their own country no youth activities are existing. Often the youngsters are only the consuming part and not willing to invest any efforts on this subject.

Markus Georg offered to write an article for Retina International Newsletter pointing out the special needs for youngsters with RP.

Dave Waldron was appointed by Christina Fasser as official contact person from Retina International for the eventually new founded sub committee for RI youth group.

3. Sub committee of Retina International Youth

Christina Fasser left the meeting in order to get the discussion started.

A few minutes later the discussion was fully in swing. Each country reported about the minimum and maximum age for members of their youth group. A big gap showed that culture reasons are causing different rules. Therefore we agreed to set only a recommendation for the RI members about the ages within a youth group. Different settlements are possible. The age was fixed from 16-35.

For the sub committee following people were announced:

Noreen Power – Waldron (Ireland)

Norika Wada (Japan)

Pekka Rantanen (Finland)

Anne Berit Gransjoen (Norway) (or somebody else from Norway)

Markus Georg (Germany)

The first action of this sub committee will be to find an official contact person for youth work in each member country of RI and to set a draft of guidelines for those contact persons.

It must be guaranteed that the contact persons have the support from their domestic RP society.

Further activities will be to set a policy, advising the purpose of youth group, etc.

Markus Georg pointed out to have a strict separation between REY and RIY at this stage. REY is a working group which an existing infrastructure, tasks and goals. Of course RE is a sub group of RI, but at the moment RIY is definitive not existing, but we try hard on it.

In order to get the things with RIY started it was advised to use the mailing list of REY which already exists. Both sides would have advantages. For RIY it is the easiest and fastest way to get in contact. For the mailing list a little bit more traffic of sending messages would stimulate the discussions of the community.

The sub committee decided not to use the mailing list for their work on the papers. Emails should be sent as copies to all members of this committee.

End of 2003 results must be presented by this sub committee in order to work in those subjects on next RI congress in the Netherlands in 2004.

4. Closing of the meeting

Markus Georg closed this meeting after approx. 1 hour. He thanked for the assistance and cooperation of all the participants and the interesting discussion. Markus Georg will inform Christina Fasser in a few words about the results. Noreen Power- Waldron will submit the most important topics of the decided steps to Dave Waldron in order to inform all members of RI managing board on their next meeting on next Monday. Following the REY meeting was hold.