UMAEL
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Announcement by Brother Patrick on the Appointment of
The Union creates links of friendship and solidarity among the 10 million Lasallian Former Students and helps to spread and perpetuate the message of St John Baptist de La Salle. The appointment is for a four-year term until 2007. Mr. Ng will in fact be representing the Pacific Asia Region of which Hong Kong is a part. This s the first time that a Hong Kong Lasallian is appointed to the UMAEL Executive Committee. It is a great honour for Hong Kong. Mr. Ng graduated from La Salle College in 1967. He was the President of the La Salle College Old Boys' Association in 1982-1984. He is the current Chairman of the La Salle Foundation which was established in 1992 to raise funds primarily to meet the need of La Salle. Mr. Ng retired from the Hong Kong Government in 2003 after 33 years of service. His last job was the Secretary for Transport. I am sure you will join me in wishing Mr. Ng every success in his new role in UMAEL and to pledge him our support. Brother Patrick Tierney (September 2003) PARC Exco - September 2004 Progress Report by Nicholas W F Ng on UMAEL Liaison in the Region I was appointed to the Executive Committee of the World Union of Lasallian Former Students (UMAEL) in September 2003, with responsibility for maintaining liaison with the Lasallian Former Students organisations in the Pacific Asia Region. The main thrust of the work of Umael during the current term is to expand the membership of Umael and to establish close contact with the Lasallian Former Students organisations. Membership is open to all individual organisations of Lasallian Former Students as well as the federations of these bodies. I have set myself a three-pronged plan of action in my contacts with the Lasallian former student organisations in the PARC Region. The first step is to establish contact with these organisations, as I am new to them. There is then the need to PUBLICISE to them the existence and objectives of Umael, as a lot of them are not familiar with Umael. The second step is to PROMOTE membership of Umael to them. Very few PARC organisations have joined Umael. The third step is to get them to PARTICIPATE in Umael activities eventually. To establish contacts with the PARC organizations, I solicited the help of Bro Patrick Tierney, the Auxiliary Visitor for Hong Kong and Bro David Hawke, the PARC Chairman, in linking me up with these organisations. Using the "model" letter from Umael headquarters as a basis, I sent out a customised letter to all the Visitors/Auxiliary Visitors in the PARC Region in April 2004 and requested them to pass it to the various Lasallian former student organisations in their area. The larger communities have all acknowledged receipt of the letter and promised to pass it to their former student organisations. However responses so far have been very slow. I have now established formal contact with one organisation in Singapore and one in Japan. One association in Australia (St. Bede College in Melbourne) has become the first Australian association to join Umael, although it has so far not responded to my approach for maintaining liaison. I have also got in touch with all the five organisations in Hong Kong. Four are now members of Umael and I expect the last one to join in due course. I have recently asked the various Brother Visitors/Auxiliary Visitors to try again to get their former student organisations to contact me. At the moment I have to rely on the Brothers to put me in touch with these organisations as I do not have their names and addresses and contact persons. My task in the next few months is to continue with the effort to establish contact with the PARC Region organisations (still the PUBLICISE phase) and to develop a close relationship with those whom I have established contact (the PROMOTE phase). The PARTICIPATE phase will probably have to wait. It is understandable that the urge for an individual Lasallian Former Students association to join the worldwide union may not be strong. Indeed there are no tangible benefits (and few obligations either). But membership underscores our identity as part of the wider and universal Lasallian Family, and our pride in such a privilege. The main obligation for Umael members is to keep in touch and to promote the Lasallian ethos and friendship. There is also the annual membership fee of US$100. Joining Umael is easy. After the individual association's executive committee or board approves the application to join Umael, the application can be sent through the internet on UmaePs website www.umael-lasalle.org. |
