Welcome to 2012. It is shaping up to be a typically busy year.

Event Co-ordinators

• Don't forget to add your events to the calendar

• To do check list and Attendance forms

• Throughout the year WICEN has several opportunities for people to run events. If haven't run an event before don't be shy in coming forward as we can back your contributions with experienced coordinators. You can also lend a hand on some of the larger events such as HCC. The Trek for Timor (T4T) is a great one in the Sydney area to start your contribution on.

Training Update

• We had one member come forward from the WICEN membership after our request in early Dec to fill the role of the training officer. Thank you to Suzanne Heimann, VK2FSUZ, for offering to assist in this key role.

• One key activity that WICEN has to undertake is to revitalise our training so that we are amongst other things compliant to the requirements of the VRA. For our VRA commitments this essentially means that all members will become classified either; as available for call out, trainee or non-active member. To be classified as an available for call out member you will have to have competed the applicable sections of the VRA induction and basic operator competencies. These are formal certificated courses that are administered by the VRA's Registered Training Organisation. Many of us will be able to apply for recognition of prior learning to gain all or part of the competencies needed to satisfy these courses.

• In the coming months the relevant parts of our member database will be uploaded to the VRA database. This allows our progression through the VRA training process can be tracked. When your details are loaded to the VRA database you will receive an email to the email address that you have most recently provided to WICEN so that you can then check the details and update these as needed.

Member Survey

Thanks to all of those who contributed to the survey run in Nov/Dec last year. We had just over ¼ of our members respond. The results of the survey were used in the recent day long workshop by the State Committee that looked at how to progress the aims of WICEN in the coming year.

Reporting

A reminder to all of those who are event co-ordinators that regardless of what region you are in you must report the hours worked including travelling time to operations@nsw.wicen.org.au. This is so we can report the total hours worked by WICEN each month to the VRA.
Our timely reporting of our hours report is mandatory for us to continue to receive funding grants from the VRA. Additionally you must complete the event notification notice and email it to operations@nsw.wicen.org.au regardless of what region you are in. Failure to complete the event notification may see the event not being recognised as a WICEN event and as a consequence insurance coverage may not be available. Both the event hours and event notification forms described as Notification of Event and Attendance Form are on the WWW site under forms.

Upcoming events in WWW Events Notification

As we become aware of events they are being added to the events notification area on the WWW site.
If you know of events as an event co-ordinator then please either add the event directly or provide the details to Andrew Vaughan, andrewvaughan230@gmail.com so Andrew can add these for you. We do get members asking for dates and so forth of events and if these are on the WWW site then it makes it much easier for this information to be made easily available.

WICEN Safe Work Methods Statement

The committee has been reviewing a Safe Work Methods Statement that will shortly become WICEN policy. This covers the way every person in WICEN must work when performing any sort of WICEN activities. It is essentially common sense, however it is important that every member reads and follows the details of the policy. It is designed to keep you safe and to reduce the risk to WICEN and its members as well as others who may be in proximity to our activities.

Name Badges

The next batch of name badges was posted last week. There are just a couple more to come which were late travelling requests. Please be sure to wear this badge when you are participating in a WICEN activity.

Insurance

We are looking for someone who has expertise and/or knowledge in the insurance industry to determine the insurance needs of WICEN and review this against the insurances that we currently have in place. We would then ask for a recommendation on what, if any, we may need to ensure that WICEN has adequate and appropriate insurance coverage for the activities that we undertake. So if you have this type of expertise then please come forward and assist.

Wyong

Thanks to those members who will be at the CCARC Wyong Field Day on the 26th Feb and who have offered to spend some time manning the WICEN table. We are planning on being able to process membership renewals as well as providing information to prospective new WICEN members. If you would like to help out then please contact Al Hirschel (VK2VEC). Otherwise make sure you come and say hello.

Compton Allen

VK2HRX

Vice President

WICEN NSW Inc.