1. Heide David carried

September 10, 2008

Regrets: Christina, Laurie, Gail

Call to order: 7:05 pm

2.      Approve minutes of 16^th July 2008: 1. Heide 2. David CARRIED

3.      Reports of Officers

a)      President-Lisa: Welcome it’s been a quiet summer.

2. 
   Treasurer Central-Phil: no report, approximately $4500 in account.
   

Treasurer Vancouver-Barb:

1. 
   Membership-Barb
   

1. 
   Deborah Jones, Delta – the Rain Gardens speaker
   
2. 
   Vas Sladek, North Vancouver – GreenFirst! Landscaping
   

Evergreen (already in place), Coop Cars, Suzuki Foundation (hyperlinked to Lisa and SOUL), Wildlife Refuge Association, Greater Victoria Compost Education Centre, City Farmer, North Shore Recycling.

Barb to write letters/email to invite other groups to link with us. Other ideas and groups welcome, please email barb.

2. 
   OMG-JR
   

A former OMG student has billed himself as a Certified Organic Master Gardener when he was a speaker. This is not our designation. OMGs are not ‘certified’ as there was no exam. The designation is ‘Organic Master Gardener’.

There is a totally separate designation, complete with a very very difficult and arduous exam, ‘Certified Organic Landcare Professional’.

OMG committee to speak to future classes and make sure this designation mixup does not occur again as we must be careful how we present ourselves to the public.

c)      Education-Heide:

• 
  Review of PURE presentations
  
• 
  PURE presentations went really well, people got it. Esquimalt was interested in the fact that SOUL has organic standards already. We should look into municipalities that have pesticide bylaws and let them know that we have SOUL organic certification and organic standards already in place. This should also be part of our Visioning.
  
• 
  
  
• 
  Vote to allow CRD to publish booklets
  
• 
  Motion: At $2 each, the books are not really a fundraiser. It would be cheap publicity to have the booklets ready to download on the SOUL web page and linked to interested municipalities. 1. Michael 2. Lisa CARRIED
  
• 
  We should go further with this idea, a letter writing campaign to interested parties. We will explore this idea further in Visioning. It is a good opportunity for SOUL to mainstream.
  

5. 
   Reports of Chapters
   

We had a lovely BBQ at Chez Martan with lots of food, wine and badminton; volunteering at Farmers’ Markets is ongoing; we are trying to roundup instructors to visit WRA to see how they would like to use the facility.

We need an OMG to volunteer for the Burnaby School Board Information session on Wednesday Sept. 17 at Burnaby Central. JR (Jolene Rebecca) & Barb volunteered.

Victoria-Phil

Victoria does not have a good meeting place yet, they are pursuing a relationship with Compost Education. The OMGs could meet there and hold workshops. OMGs could teach workshops or a course. David would like acknowledge Marisa Herrera, Tanya Kendall and Nancy Brown for organizing and running the Garden Tour.

6.      Old Business

1. 
   December symposium
   

2. 
   CanWest Hort Show
   

3. 
   PURE presentations in Vancouver: Gail absent, no report. Tabled until next meeting.
   

e)      Business cards: Vancouver directors to receive their cards at tomorrows Chapter meeting.

f)        Email accounts: All directors have been set up with organiclandcare.org email accounts

g)      Directors’ bios: reminder to send them in to Phil.

8. 
   SOUL logo:
   

Lisa would like a sticker that adds to the existing sticker stating ‘Certified Landcare Professional’ instead of a whole new badge/sticker with another logo. Heide would like to see an example of Lisa’s idea. Phil has various drawings of new logos and will bring them to the Teachers’ Retreat weekend for perusal. They will also be scanned for the rest of us to look at.

5. 
   New Business