MCFA General Assembly 2019
Dear MCFA member or affiliate,
we invite you to the celebration of our biannual General Assembly. The meeting will take place in Duisburg on the 7th of April 2019 with following agenda:
09:30 in situ / on-line Registration
10:00 Start of the Ordinary General Assembly (only for MCFA members)
In case no quorumis reached, there will be a networking slot and the Extraordinary General Assembly
will start one hour later with the same agenda, as stipulated at the statutes.
11:00 Start of the Extraordinary General Assembly (only for MCFA members)
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Welcome, Agenda
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Activity report, including the relationship to MCAA
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Financial report
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Discharge of the Administrative Board
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Proposal to dissolve the MCFA and to relocate the activities into the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) – next steps
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Election of the new Administrative Board
14:00 Lunch time and end
Please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mcfa-general-assembly-2019-tickets-58399570688
At the MCFA General Assembly, a new Administrative Board will be elected. Any member can candidate to join the Administrative Board. If you are interested please send an email to office@mcfa.eu with your profile and your motivation to candidate until Friday 29th March 2019.We will present all the candidates onhttp://mcfa.eu/on the days before of the General Assembly.
Please consider that only full members have the right to vote at the General Assembly and to be candidate for the Administrative Board. In case it is necessary, you can still pay the membership fee for 2019, at http://mcfa.eu/site3/?q=membership2 (accessible once logged in to http://mcfa.eu/ ).
We will be happy to see you in Duisburg or get your vote on-line. Instructions about how to do it on-line will be sent per email.
The MCFA Administrative Board
Reasons for the Proposal to dissolve the MCFA and to relocate the activities into the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA)
Since the foundation of the MCAA in November 2013 many of the MCFA active members have supported the start activities of the MCAA. The MCFA itself was in the same manner founded 1996 by the European Commission and after 3 years of financial support, became independent due to lack of further founding. Therefore, the Administrative Board of the MCFA had decided to wait, until it was clear, that the MCAA can be sustainable. In this past 6 years, the MCAA has continuously growth until reach today more than 13000 members. It seems, that in few years, with the actions done mainly by the second and actual third MCAA Boards, the Alumni Association can be able in middle term to support itself.
The MCFA Chair was invited to participate at a meeting together with the MCAA Board members during the MCAA Board meeting on the 22nd of February 2019 before the 6thGeneral Meeting in Vienna. During this meeting the MCAA Board recognized that MCFA has a long history dating back to the early days of the Marie Curie Actions (FP5). It was offered the possibility to include this history as part of the previous activities to the foundation of the MCAA at the MCAA website. The MCAA recognizes as well that decisions about MCFA funding and the future of MCFA lie solely with the MCFA and its members.
As the MCAA offers meanwhile the same possibilities for members to contribute as the MCFA did in former times – mainly through Working Groups and (national/regional) Chapters – the MCFA has reduced all activities in these areas. All MCFA members are eligible to be members of MCAA, and we know that many of them already are. The effort to contact each MCFA member to ask if she/he allows the MCFA Board to forward their data to the MCAA is too much work to be done by the voluntary MCFA Board members. Therefore we appeal all the MCFA members, that until now do not did so, to join the MCAA. We will made no data transfer. It will be probably a pity for the data of the first members that joined and that maybe are not following the MCAA, but we cannot afford to do the transfer as the data security laws are expecting to be done.
The only activity that is really “alive” is our Facebook group with 6.5 thousand members. And we could include “Alumni” in the name of the group in case we reach the support of the MCAA for it.
Due to the lack of new members (because we decided to stop advertising MCFA in favour of the MCAA) and the few time available from the volunteers running MCFA at the moment, we the MCFA Administration Board want to propose the dissolution of the Marie Curie Fellows Association.
We, the MCFA Administrative Board will prepare an online voting for the members to agree or disagree with this proposal. In case the proposal is accepted, we will prepare all the necessary legal steps to close the association. The remaining money will be donated to the MCAA bonded to specific support for travel issues in the GEMS Working Group in order to visit conferences and events in name of the GEMS WG, as this kind of travel grants are not at the moment available. The new elected Administrative Board will act then as “liquidateur” panel. In case the members decide that the MCFA should continue, the actual Board will not be available for further leading voluntary work.
Any comments and ideas before the General Assembly are welcome. Please write to mcfa.natalia.balcazar@gmail.com.
We want to thank all the former members that have invested their time and engaged to run the MCFA for more than 20 years. Without that work, the fellowships and the programmes would not have evolved as they have done – in a way to allow more people to have the chance to show how good scientists from and in Europe are. The feedback that MCFA gave and the voluntary work done in panels and committees has led to a more balanced, open and variable offer for all the scientists around the world. We are proud of it. Now it is time to hand over…