Participants
Avantina S Bhandari
Francisco Bozzano-Barnes
Gundula Schmidt-Graute
Hee Jung Lee-Dawkins
Mayank Jain
Rachida MRabet
Ravishankar Najundeswaran
Teresa Sola
Geraldine Glassman participated at the beginning and the end of the meeting to give us guidance.
Because this was our first meeting, we did not follow a formal agenda. Instead we brainstormed about what we thought NYLESA should focus on and how to get organised.
The topics included:
Housing, employment, schooling and activities for children, social events, the development of a Web site, welcoming activities for newcomers, multilingual materials, the need for printed documentation, recruitment of spouses, the use of information technologies and social networking Internet-based tools, and the need to establish ourselves as the official NYLESA entity, to differentiate from other complementary, mutual aid activities for UN spouses.
We decided that the group would be the Steering Committee for the NYLESA and to create two working groups:
A spouse employment group with the participation of:
Gundula Schmidt-Graute, Rachida MRabet and Ravishankar Najundeswaran;
And a welcoming group with the participation of:
Avantina S Bhandari, Hee Jung Lee-Dawkins and Teresa Sola.
Mayank Jain agreed to advise the group about the most appropriate IT tools to facilitate communications.
Francisco Bozzano-Barnes will act as coordinator of the NYLESA.