Looking to the future from the top of the world

“At the opening of last year’s General Assembly, I started by saying it was the last time we would gather together under the old name for our organization, because by the next General Assembly we would be “Humanists International”…

And this is a pledge fulfilled!

I don’t know about you but I’m already very used to the new name and the new branding for our organization. And I think that is a testimony to how well the new designs fit our voice and our values, and how the staff have made the implementation so smooth and consistent. So here we are: welcome to the General Assembly of Humanists International!

I am sure that the new name and the new branding, along with the new website and new printed materials and everything else that comes along with such a change, is a huge boost for our work. We present now as a more modern, more connected organization, the name is easier to say(!), I think we are perceived as more welcoming and more energetic; and that’s all going to help us, whether it’s delivering advocacy, reaching new supporters, campaigning, recruiting new member organizations, and so on.

And indeed we have another record intake of new Member Organizations to ratify this year. The Growth & Development programme was focusing last year on Africa and this year on Asia and you’ll see that reflected in the list of new Member Organizations, once again showing how committed we are to making Humanists International truly international, and representative of humanists wherever in the world they are from.

There’s also been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes, including some pretty radical revision of our financial arrangements. The chief executive will talk to you about that in more detail later, however I’ll say for now that the Board believes that the changes we’re making to our banking arrangements and our investment strategy mean that we’ll be more accountable — and most-importantly that we’re likely to have a significant boost to our annual income from investments going forwards.

As you should have seen in the months leading up to this meeting, we have also been consulting with Member Organizations on changes to our membership structure. Those of you at last year’s meeting will recall this that we presented a paper, and discussed together, the kinds of challenges presented by our membership structure. The last big revisions to the membership structure were made eight years ago. That’s not all that long on the timescale of an organization of our esteemed vintage! However, times changes and the balance of membership types shifts and the way we calculate fees and votes gets tested… So the Board thinks it’s only right that any democratic organization continually monitors and reviews its structure and pre-empts the structural issues. So thank you for discussing those issues with us last year, thanks to those of you who made comments during consultation on the proposals, and we’ll be having the discussion on that later, to see if you, the membership, feel the proposed changes address the concerns we identified and whether the proposals should be adopted today.

Thank you to everyone who is here and thank you to all the Member Organizations who have nominated proxies if they couldn’t be here to vote.”

I think you’ll agree that it’s been a busy period – especially taking into account that we’ve had a shorter gap than usual between General Assemblies this past year. So with all this to discuss it’s a busy General Assembly, we’d better get started!

Welcome to the Humanists International General Assembly 2019.”