Officer Meeting February 28th

The committee heads will be coming up with task lists by this Sunday's meeting (March 2nd), with the exception of Groovefest, which Will should have by next Thursday (March 6th).  

Individual Officer Reports

President

• We're searchable!!!  Our website is now listed under the regional listings on amnestyusa.org
  
• Fundraising answers - Sarah heard back from Adiyah about our concerns with fundraising for other organizations.  We got the green light for co-sponsoring Groovefest and participating in Walk for Women (with a donation/information table for AI & their stop violence against women campaign)

Vice President

• Ephraim was not here, but he is working on Big Event!

Secretary

• We talked briefly about ways to improve the active members list 
  
• Cindy mentioned a campaign to make 100% of the coffee on campus fair trade, and will forward some contacts

Treasurer

• Will set up our budget interview with UOSA for Sunday, March 9
  
• He is looking into emergency funding for Groovefest this spring, and will have a phone conference today with the Groovefest planners
  

Urgent Action Coordinator

• Mady is trying to think of ways to make the letter writing go more smoothly
  

We talked about transitioning from the gmail account to our OU account and thinking about making a new system for our listserv

We also talked about staying informed with the other Oklahoma Amnesty groups

Groovefest is happening!

That's right, folks. I've received word that Groovefest IS happening this spring (tentatively Sunday, April 27) and OU Amnesty International is co-sponsoring! I'm putting together an application for emergency funding so that we can do our part to help make Groovefest an awesome success.

Our informal meeting this Sunday will be coordinated with a Groovefest planning meeting. We will meet at Blu Wine and Foods on Crawford, just south of Main, at 6:30 and conduct our UAN letters and group business. Right around 7:00 pm we will meet with the Groovefest board and start talking about ways we can raise money and support for Groovefest. Hope to see you all there!

-Will

Agenda from Feb. 24th General Meeting

Introduction
Meet and Greet/Sign In

About Amnesty International
A little bit about the organization - successes

Short Presentation
Ideas/requests for short presentations/guest speakers

Old Business

Statewide Conference
Letter writing meeting Feb 17th – sign and turn in letters

New Business

Budget turned in February 21st

Get Into Committees
· Urgent Action
· Short Presentations
· Groovefest
· Membership
· Tshirt
· Volunteer Coordinating

Working in the OU, Norman, and Oklahoma communities

· Conflict in Kenya – Oklahoma Wow! (Work of Women) Network Program on Thursday, Feb. 28 from 6 to 8 pm. Peter Gubbels, World Neighbors vice president of the international program, will discuss the current conflict in Kenya, its roots and how it is impacting Kenyan women and World Neighbors programs in East Africa. (presentation begins at 7pm, Village Tours begin at 6)

· Walk for Women: March 8. The purpose of the Walk for Women is to unite several Oklahoma City metro area community members in an effort to advocate against global issues such as hunger, poverty, disease, access to safe water, environmental degradation, illiteracy, gender inequalities, etc. This event will be held on March 8, 2008 from 9 am to 12 pm at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond (around Broncho Lake) in honor of International Women’s Day

· Don’t forget to register for the Oklahoma Sustainability Conference: March 28-29 . This year’s theme is “Red Dirt, Green Culture — Growing Healthy Communities.” The 7th Annual Conference of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network is a continuation of excellence in education and networking, bringing together over 500 individuals from non-profit organizations, business, and family farms to learn and grow sustainably together.

· National Week of Student Action 2008 – Shut Down Guantánamo - registering to participate in this year's NWSA (March 31- April 4, 2008)

Urgent Action Network

Presentation of latest UA
Letter writing Sunday, March 2nd

Added Items

Big Event registration deadline is this Friday, February 29th - register under Amnesty International/Our Earth

Katy talked to Student Affairs about barefoot for children project

Close Meeting

Next general meeting – March 9th time and place TBA

Spring Groovefest

I went to a Groovefest planning meeting tonight for information on the biennial concert which is scheduled for April 27th (the day after the Norman Music Festival). For those of you who don't know, Groovefest was started in 1986 by Oklahoma Amnesty International! We had a table up at last fall's concert, but other than that we have been conspicuously absent for three or for years. Everyone was really excited that OU-AI was ready to be a part of Groovefest once again.

Groovefest needs a lot of help, and I think we are in a position to help make it happen. Quite simply, Groovefest needs time and money. I'm going to check tomorrow to see what kind of funds we have left in our UOSA account; there's a possibility we might be able to co-sponsor Groovefest. This is going to be a pretty sizeable commitment, but I think we can do it. We could also apply for emergency funding through UOSA, or obtain additional funds from the CAC Speaker's Bureau and Concert Bureau. We will also be contacting Adiyah Ali, our regional AI-USA coordinator, to see about the possibility of getting funds from the regional or national AI offices.

There are two questions that I will be trying to answer this week:
1) If Groovefest is co-sponsored by Oklahoma Amnesty International (that's us), would the University's insurance coverage for events extend to Groovefest? This may not sound like much, but we would be saving Groovefest about $500 for event insurance. However, that leads me to question
2) If Groovefest is co-sponsored by OU-AI, is it subject to the same rules/restrictions as a University-sponsored event? For example, would all vendors have to sell Coca-Cola products? Would Groovefest be alcohol-free? Could we only use the money for things like printing/tabling materials, or could we spend it on things that are necessary to make Groovefest run (like the thousands of permits, sound equipment, etc.)?

We will be having our next informal meeting in conjunction with the Groovefest planning meeting. I will have more information on that sometime soon. Thanks!

-Will O'Donnell

Letter Writing meeting Feb. 17th

At this meeting we wrote on two Urgent Actions - our first one about a child offender facing the death penalty in Iran and another about in Kenya. It's not too late to write letters of your own, even if you didn't make it to the meeting! The reports can be found here and here. If you need some help getting started, Amnesty's website has some great resources and tips to explain how to write the letters most effectively.

We talked about ideas and plans for next year, including the issues we will be focusing on and possible events.

And everyone got to see the hole in Sarah's house...

Don't forget to bring your letters to our next general meeting on the 24th at 6pm in the Scholars room.

Statewide Conference in Stillwater

The statewide conference was really inspirational. We got some valuable information and listened to some really talented speakers, as well as getting to know other human rights activists from other chapters across the state.

Jennifer McLaughlin from the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault gave a really informative presentation on the some of the problems highlighted in Amnesty International's "Maze of Injustice" report. We really felt inspired to continue working on this campaign, and hopefully now that Oklahoma's legislature is in session we can do some lobbying to bring attention to the issues she presented.

Adiyah Ali, our AI regional coordinator, put on a fundraising workshop that gave us some great ideas and tips for fundraising, which is a really important aspect of human rights work - after all, human rights work costs money! Fundraising is one thing that our chapter really needs to work on, so it was great to get some help in that area.

Rockey Robbins was the keynote speaker at the conference, drawing on his experiences working in Native American communities to bring our attention to other ways of thinking about our relationship to human rights work. He is currently an Associate Professor in Counseling Psychology here at OU.

After the conference, we went out for Thai food with students and professors from several other schools. We had some great conversations, and ate a lot.

Who knows, maybe we can host next year's conference...

Agenda from February 10th General Meeting

Introduction
Meet and Greet/Sign In

About Amnesty International
A little bit about the organization – National Priorities
(for more information on this, click here)

Short Presentation
Ephraim gives a short presentation about short presentations
Esha Mufti from Students for Action in Darfur (more info)
Ideas/requests for short presentations/guest speakers

Old Business
Letter writing meeting Feb 3rd – sign letters

New Business

Budget

Statewide Conference this Saturday (!!) February 16th from 10am-4pm in Willard Hall at OSU

Get Into Committees
· Urgent Action (Mady)
· Short Presentations (Ephraim)
· Groovefest (Will)
· Membership (Sarah)
· Tshirt (Ephraim)
· Volunteer Coordinating (Will)

The Vagina Monologues – Performance February 11th and 12th in Meacham Auditorium at 7pm

Working in the OU, Norman, and Oklahoma communities

· Walk for Women: March 8. The purpose of the Walk for Women is to unite several Oklahoma City metro area community members in an effort to advocate against global issues such as hunger, poverty, disease, access to safe water, environmental degradation, illiteracy, gender inequalities, etc. This event will be held on March 8, 2008 from 9 am to 12 pm at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond (around Broncho Lake) in honor of International Women’s Day
· Oklahoma Sustainability Conference: March 28-29 . This year’s theme is “Red Dirt, Green Culture — Growing Healthy Communities.” The 7th Annual Conference of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network is a continuation of excellence in education and networking, bringing together over 500 individuals from non-profit organizations, business, and family farms to learn and grow sustainably together.
· National Week of Student Action 2008 – It's that time of year again! National Week of Student Action (NWSA) 2008 is quickly approaching and we need YOUR help. Help us Shut Down Guantánamo by registering to participate in this year's NWSA (March 31- April 4, 2008). Join other student activists in demanding the closure of Guantánamo and release of prisoners unless they are to be charged and tried in accordance with international standards of fair trial.

Urgent Action Network
Presentation of latest UA
Letter writing Sunday, February 17th at 7:30pm at Sarah’s new house (816 Lahoma, just south of Brooks)

Added Items
There are many opportunities for us to get out into the community this semester - here are just a few we talked about at the end of the meeting.

• The Oklahoma WOW! (Work of Women) Network Program will give a presentation about the current conflict in Kenya on Thursday, February 28th at the World Neighbors Headquarters located at 4127 NW 122nd Street in Oklahoma City. For more information about this event and the Walk for Women on March 8, click here.
• Sarah Whitten talked to us about the Clinton Global Initiative.
• Katie Baker informed us of her idea for an awareness-raising project about poverty that we will find out more about at our next meeting.

Close Meeting
Next general meeting – February 24th

Officer meeting Thursday, Feb. 7th

Officer Reports

• Treasurer - Will is looking into the requirements for the UOSA budget, which is due soon. He will attend the UOSA budgetary meeting next week to find out more information.
• Urgent Action - Mady is finding out the necessary procedures for postage to mail our UA letters, and had the idea to send out the UA as an attachment to the email announcement of letter writing meetings so people can read & become familiar with it in advance
• Vice President - Ephraim is formulating a list of committees and will make sign up sheets
• President - the OU website has been updated with mostly correct information, and we now have access to our OU email account, but we need a web developer
• Secretary - Cindy suggested that we do an event related to poverty and we discussed the importance of making activists in the developed world understand the significance of social, economic, and cultural rights

Dr. Skeeters gave us information about the allocation of UOSA funds and suggested some ideas for next year's events, including putting together a panel discussion or inviting a speaker, having a banquet (an awareness raising "hunger banquet," perhaps)

We need to get a good idea of what events we're having next year so they can be included in our budget.

Letter Writing meeting February 3rd, 2008

We met at Ephraim's apartment and wrote letters for our latest Urgent Action, concerning the safety of human rights workers at a center in Coahuila, Mexico called "Fray Juan de Larios."

After we finished our letters, we watched the film "Invisible Children" and had some great discussion about it. Thanks so much to Audrey for bringing the movie and giving us background information on the film and about Students for Uganda.

Officer Meeting January 31, 2008

Officer Reports

Treasurer

• Will be working on putting together a “blue form” (UOSA accounting request form) policy
  
• Budget – need to find out deadline for 2008-2009 budget and requirements
  

Urgent Action

• Will send out email to inform everyone about Sunday’s meeting
  
• Purchase supplies (stamps, envelopes, etc) and make sure copies of letters are made
  

Vice President

Will be putting everyone into committees

• Urgent Action (Mady)
  
• Short Presentation (Ephraim)
  
• Groovefest (Will)
  
• Statewide conference (Sarah)
  
• The Vagina Monologues (Kylie)
  
• Membership (Sarah)
  
• Tshirt (Ephraim)
  
• Volunteer coordinating
  
• Camping (yes, really) (Will)
  

President

• Trying to get website going so we can have a calendar
  
• Dr. Skeeters might start coming to meetings
  
• Organizing, organizing…
  

Constitutional Convention – we should plan one, to work on our group’s constitution