Thank you to everyone who joined us on Zoom last week. It was great to see your smiling faces and appreciate your feedback on what we can be doing to grow into the organization that we need in Georgia for all Acupuncturists.
As we discussed at the meeting, our main mission for the coming year is to build community among Georgia Acupuncturists. Without active membership from the acupuncture community, we really don't have an Association. We are delighted that Fabiola Medeiros has stepped up to take on the role of Membership Chair and Vice President. Fabiola will replace Danielle Pechac, who has been in that role for the last several months and has decided to resign. The Board unanimously welcomes Fabiola's enthusiasm and willingness to help us in our efforts to grow our membership so that we can do great things. We thank Danielle for her efforts and hope she will remain involved with the organization.
One thing we heard loud and clear at the meeting is that we need to communicate more often through different channels and are committed to doing just that. In addition to these emails, we invite you to join us on Facebook, Facebook.com/gaaam. We share articles of interest and post events that are happening around the country. It's also a great place for you to ask questions and provide information with your colleages. If you know of another acupuncturist who isn't getting our emails, please have them reach out to us by email or FB.
Here are a few of our plans for the remainder of this year:
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We are implementing a new membership software product that will make it easy to join, will track our membership and automatically send dues renewal notices. It's time to get rid of those “old fashioned” spreadsheets that are a challenge to keep up with. This software will also allow us to share events and offer tickets and the opportunity to sign up for these events. And finally it has built in email functionality that will make it easy to send communication to everyone – members and non-member acupuncturists (if we have their email address).
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We are planning a series of in person and online community gatherings. The Board has committed to having some concrete dates and locations by mid-September so stay tuned for that announcement. Initially, we plan to host a gathering at a local brewery that has a large outdoor seating area on the Southside of Atlanta. We'd love to do similar outdoor events in other areas of Atlanta, as well as Savannah, Athens and other areas with a high concentration of acus. If you can volunteer to coordinate an event, please let us know. We can't do this without your help!
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We are also planning a hike somewhere this fall and will host another virtual gathering for those who are not able or choose not to to attend an in person event. Again, if you have some ideas for a hike or other activities for building community and would like to volunteer to coordinate please let us know.
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We are looking into joining the American Society of Acupuncturists to give us more visibility and input into what is going on at a national level and to get ideas from other states.
We are all volunteers with busy practices (hopefully), and the future of our profession in Georgia needs our attention. Won't you get involved?
