werkgroepen at groenlinks utrecht, III: meeting day

Werkgroepen dag

One of the things that I checked in my walking around werkgroepen inside the Utrecht afdeling is that we count with several clubs that are well aware of the existence of other clubs... but do not have much contact with them.

Of course, one might ask why a groenlinkser busy with environment activism should have anything to do with groenlinksers migrant organizations. Actually, most active groenlinksers have a really busy agenda, and groenlinks activism is one among many other activities. So in principle is always a bit difficult to get an active member to do a bit more, outside her -or his- sphere of actions. Nevertheless, one could always imagine that groenlinksers can profit from meeting other groenlinksers.

To give a couple of examples, the Linksom redactie is always on the lookout for activities that can be reported in our ledenblaad. Many times we are too slow to find what is going on, not because nothing is going on, but because we don't know who is doing what... and when. Or there are werkgroepen that consider the possibility of organizing a politiek cafe, but have little contact with the werkgroep politiek cafe.

So it is easy to imagine that werkgroepen could profit from knowing each other. But how? What would be the activity that would be attractive for werkgroep members, would not take a lot of time, and would offer a net gain of experience?

Thinking along this lines, I have a simple proposal. Imagine a saturday/sunday afternoon. After lunch and before dinner, there is a window of couple useful hours. Along this time, werkgroepen are called to the partijkantoor. For welcoming we could hear in -say half an hour- a little talk on current bestuur plans. Then, each werkgroep is asked to give a five minutes presentation of their actions. Considering that the afdeling utrecht has some seven different active clubs, we are 45 minutes later. We have some half an hour left, and that can be used to shoot questions around.

With this setup in mind, we have a two hours session, in which clubs of active members of groenlinks will know what their collegas are busy with. More interesting than that, we would have associated names with faces, perhaps even some telephone numbers and emails would be exchanged. Surely, everybody knows that there is such a thing as a cultuur werkgroep. But would you be able to greet one of her members in the street? Or, would you know whom to contact when hearing about organized Zuilenaren that are busy with air pollution? Yeah, to the fractie... but whom from the milieu werkgroep? Would the milieu werkgroep care to know? This trivial questions, if properly answered, could help in making groenlinks utrecth a better oiled machine... or a well connected ecosystem, if the technological metaphor is unpleasant.