OMC CHAIR'S OPEN LETTER TO ALL CHAPTER MEMBERS AND LEADERS

As you may know, our outings leaders have to know many things. Our national organization expects that basic first aid and Sierra Club Outing Policy knowledge be refreshed every four years. Four years ago, our leaders were required to meet the basic first aid requirement. This year we are expected to fulfill the policy requirement.

At the beginning of the year, the expectation was that this policy refreshing requirement was to be met by July 1st. We communicated this to our leaders and outings chairs at the beginning of the year. The Outings Management Committee (OMC) also devised a plan to provide guidance and oversight to facilitate the completion of task in a timely fashion. Our plan is highly dependent upon our nearly 50 Entity Outing Chairs (OC). They are expected to contact their leaders. Once a leader completes the refreshment, the OC notifies our Leader Database Keeper so that our database is updated. Since the membership of groups, sections, committees, and task forces overlaps, we expect the group OCs to make sure that all leaders within their groups are contacted. This is an expectation, even if the said leader doesn't participate in group activities. The desire is that the group OC takes this opportunity to alter this 'fact'.

In concert with this plan, we also requested an extension of the July 1st implementation date to the end of the year. A formal extension was granted to the Angeles Chapter on June 16th. Even though a verbal extension granted in October 2007, we wanted a formal extension in writing. We felt that this formality was necessary because of our experience four years ago when the basic first aid refreshing requirement was imposed. A verbal extension was granted, and forgotten by some. This led to some difficulty and bad feeling.

It is my belief that the extension was granted because of the excellent program we have and the progress we are making. When the formal extension was granted, we had nearly 900 leaders and 57% and 93% compliance on the policy and 1st aid update requirements respectively. Currently, we have over 900 leaders and an OLT101+ compliance of 67%.