KDVP Class of ‘69 #1

Newsletter #1

( To my fellow committee members. I appreciate that letter writing is a very personal thing and so please feel free to change anything of mine as I have done with Ian’s initial draft letter. No hard feeling )

Dear Fellow Classmates

Following on from the wonderful experience and good feelings generated from our recent reunion, a few of us (one from each of the countries in which we mostly reside) decided to meet in order to determine if there was a way forward that we might all want to proceed with besides the informal WhatsApp Chat group we currently have.

Those of us who met on Sunday were Ian Joseph (USA), Evian Gordon (USA), June Rovetti (South Africa), David Teeger (Canada) , Tzvi Josman (Israel) and Mark Blankfield (Australia). We met to discuss a few initial ideas that had been generated. It should be noted that if anyone else wishes to join the group and help with the work that is required (and there might be quite a lot) to make this a success, you would be most welcome, please just let one of us know.

The topics that we discussed were:

• Should we continue our association in a more structured way in parallel to our WhatsApp Chat group which has in itself met a need within the group? We unanimously thought we should create continuing connections.

• In order to be as successful as possible, we should gather input from the entire group as to our possible future activity by means of a survey and receive direct input from anyone willing to provide it.

• Create a newsletter to help us maintain contact in a more structured manner and send it out as needed, maybe once a month to keep people updated on any news or activity that would be of common interest. A section of the newsletter could be devoted to the ‘hatch, match, and dispatch’ content or anything else people would like to tell the wider group.

• In order to give back to the community, we could form an ‘alumni advise /coaching /mentoring program’ to advise current senior KD students who may be looking for assistance and connections in their future careers wherever they may wish to be. In order for this to be useful, those of us wishing to assist would complete a skills database that would then be circulated to the KD schools with the appropriate protocols, in order for the giver of the service to be able to accept or reject a request for service.

• Should we decide to meet again, how frequently should we arrange a meeting? We felt once a month was too frequent, yet once a year was too seldom, and so possibly three of four times a year would be appropriate.

• What would people like to do within these meetings? Perhaps have a guest speaker on issues of interest to the majority of the group, and then have some general discussion / schmooze time thereafter.

Please let us know if you have any further ideas , or if you would like to join this ad-hoc committee or have any suggestions you may have going forward. You can comment or suggest by clicking on the “Leave a comment” button below.