SPRING EVENT 2006

Participation Hits All-time High !

The ISABS Kolkata Region Spring Event 2006 came to a close on Wednesday, April 12, evening at 6.30 p.m. at Bengal Chambers on Russel Street.

I am sure we will have messages from participants on how they experienced the Event. I would like to provide some information here.

We had 3 BLHPs and 1 ALHP. There were 29 participants in the 3 BLHPs, and 5 participants in the 1 ALHP. The total of 34 is exactly double the no. of participants (17) at the Baishakhi Event at XLRI, Jamshedpur, in May 2005. The increased response is most encouraging ! Its also the highest in Region history right from the time of inception in 1991.

Participants were from many sectors: corporate, NGOs, teachers, consultants, research students, etc.

ALHP was held after a very long time. A heartening development was the keenness of several ALHP participants to go on to join the Professional Development Programme at the national event.

The facilitators were Paul Siromoni, Sanjib Basu, Somali Gupta (all BLHPs) and Sukhvinder Sircar (ALHP).

We had 3 Community Sessions, opening, middle, and closing. There was a relaxed closing party immediately after the Event organised by the participants themselves. During the event, facilitators had their clinicing sessions every evening, and also a 'happy-hour-and-half' over dinner on the penultimate evening at Kwality's across the road !

A special word of many thanks to the facilitators Paul, Sukhvinder and Somali, who came all the way from Bhilai. I want to recognise them and all the other team members who helped to organise and manage the Event : particularly Arpita Mukherjee, our Secretary, for her sustained engagement and involvement, and also Chandrima Banerjee, our Dean of Programmes, Vijay Aggarwal, who arranged for the printing of the brochures and the Event bag, Kabir Mohammad, our Treasurer, and Sreyashi Deb and Anjan Chakravarti for pitching in with assistance when requested. Many others also helped with the circulation of brochures and ensuring the higher response this time.

The momentum for this Event was initiated in the 1-day 'Renewal for Transformation' retreat in February at Dhyan Ashram, conducted by Sukhvinder and Anjan. The involvement of many members and their feelings of ownership of the common purpose have been the formula of our success, from my own vantage point of view.

If, as I expect, all goes well, our next Event would be later in the year, September or thereabouts.

Sanjib Basu, Regional Representative.