Attendees: Chris, Teresa, Zach, Sr., Sully, Shad, Bill, Margery, Jr., Ryan, Stan, Vinny
Opening games: pick your own river name Ryan is Huggybear
Also super-hero names
National Sierra Club ICO mission: Sierra Club ICO is a community outreach program that provides opportunities
Goals:
-to help people discover the beauty and challenges of the wild lands we treasure
-to acquire the skills necessary to enjoy them safely
-to learn that human activity and the natural world are related
Ryan reads our SOP mission
The program’s success helps increase
-Environmental awareness
-Interpersonal skills
-Participant’s self-esteem through active involvement with nature
ICO and YOU
We share what the mission means to us and what we enjoy most about ICO
What did we accomplish and what were our challenges that we faced personally? Steps for the future. We shared our thoughts. Dealing with high water be it training or guiding was a constant theme.
We accomplished much in 2011. We introduced Project Life Raft. We promoted 9 apprentices to Guide status.
66 active volunteers. We do have some compliance issues. We provided opportunities for advanced and high water training.
We raised over $19,000 in fundraising. 23% more than 2010.
What is the cost per participant?
2011 year in review: Trips!!!
-20 participant trips
-4 rivers: SFA, EF Carson, Cache Creek, Kings
-29 river days
-165 ICO river volunteer trips, avg. 8 per trip
-14% staffing youth guides
$-6 more trips than 2010, 43% increase
-17 participants per trip on average
-57% youth participants.
Challenges:
-High Water
-4 participant rips cancelledL
Could we have the opposite problem from last year? Low water instead of high?
We have a lot of training opportunities for different kinds of training. Please try and take advantage of them. Advanced training could be fun trips to search for other rivers and help make boating within ourselves as a group more fun.
River permits and river access
-Upper Sac and Trinity permits are in question.
-There may be changes to our SFA permit.
We currently have no grants or fundraising dinner plans for this year.
Volunteer participation
Transitions of active volunteers
Participation off-river, on-river
We’ll be pushing for more active off-river jobs with our trainees this year.
We may not be able to raft Upper Sac and Trinity due to powers that be considers us a business and Sierra Club doesn’t.
Every other river so far agrees with our current plan.
We will try to have every trainee (and possibly volunteer) to sign river code of ethics.
Break
Bill: I dream if an ICO…what is your vision of how ICO should be…trust and interactions with each other (email, in person) was a constant topic. We need to interact together as friends in the off-season be it an ICO trip or not. Off river jobs also came up a few times. Focus more on participants than guides during trips and interacting with them came up a few times. More guides being pro-active and doing more than just guide on and off-river (i.e. pre-trip meetings).
These topics fit into 4 overall bigger topics:
-Build a more trusting culture, respectful, cohesiveness 18
-Build volunteer retention 8
-Job descriptions, clarity, make them sound less daunting, more attractive, having mentors 10
-Building relationships with participant, pre-trip meetings 10
We voted on which topics to work on and the top 3 are shown in the numbers following the topics. These topics will be addressed in the meeting to take place.
Set date for meeting for these improvements Feb 21
Ryan gives compliance talk. 6 core requirements. First aid, CPR, Sierra Club membership, ICO code of ethics, signed Outing Volunteer Agreement, Criminal Background check.
Drivers get an additional DMV check.
If you are not compliant, you cannot guide your own boat. If you are not compliant, you can be kicked off a trip. Financial assistance is available. Turn your cards in to Ryan (email, scan, snail mail, etc…). If Ryan doesn’t have it, it doesn’t exist in the context of ICO.
First Aid and CPR by Mel
Saturday March 3rd
CPR: 9:45-noon
First Aid: 12:30-4:30
$15 for one class, $25 for both
A great deal, sign up online in the trip calendar
CARP Child Abuse Resistance and Protection
Lunch
Continue CARP
We have our goals for 2012 such as conducting more trips, continuing fundraising, reduce trip-related financial obligations y our participant groups when possible, etc…. (more details on power point on website)
Kathleen Ferris stops by to say hiJ
Off river positions: Teresa will do bake sale again and develop menus and recommended quantities for trips. Chris is doing first aid kit. Margery will work on make fun river meetings. Sr. will mentor a future volunteer with comm. kit.
We still need PR, environmental education, Fundraiser dinner organizers.
Some committees that would benefit from extra help:
Fundraising
Training
Selection
Finance
Outreach
Recruitment interviews will be held at Vinny’s work.
We need another chair!!!
Announcements:
Quick introduction to (D)RACI
SOP committee meeting to help refurbish the SOPs to use them more effectively. Stay tuned for future meeting date.
Training schedule is on power point on website and calendar. Sign up, we need instructors.