The WinterFest Chinese Pavilion Volunteer Appreciation Party See David Xu's Thumbnail Photo Gallery of  146 Appreciation Party Photos ENTER HERE Click for full-size images See all the photos in a full-screen slide show  HERE

Welcome Page	Faces in the Crowd	The Banquet	Entertainment
ENTER	ENTER	ENTER	ENTER

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Good evening, and welcome to the party!

Thank you to each and everyone who volunteered for the Chinese Pavilion during WinterFest.
    • Was it a success?!!
    • Were we number one?!!
    • Congratulations to all of us! Let’s give ourselves a big round of applause!

This was the first Chinese Pavilion. It could not have been so successful without each and every volunteer – whether from Maple Leaf, the community, or the university.

We do apologize for not saying “Thank you” in Chinese at the event, but the thousands of English speakers understood the contribution from each and every one of you.

With such a huge success:
    • having 10,000 visitors,
    • feeding over half of those with only compliments on the food quality, service, and sanitation
    • the tremendous variety of entertainment that amazed the visitors and still the talk of the city
    • and having no accidents or incidents of misbehaviour
                we can be proud of  this wonderful achievement.

As with every new event and organization, there are always problems. These were very minor when we look at the bigger picture. This was a learning experience for all of us:
    • For the organization committees
    • For newcomers who may not understand the idea of volunteering
    • For the students
    • And for the vendors.

Now that we have some experience, we can look at any minor problems and work to find the solutions. We should not let them become big problems before we solve them.

We have a bigger task ahead of us – to build the WestMan Chinese Association into a useful and united organization. We need to learn to work together as a group, to help each other when we have problems, to show the community that we support each other.

Brandon has the reputation as a City of Volunteers. We need to support that by being good volunteers - for the good of the whole community, and not just for ourselves. We need to show Westman that we can have a successful pavilion again because we are part of the community; we understand volunteerism.

Because of government regulations, we have to incorporate our association. This will help us in many ways: to get grants from the government, to get future sponsors, large and small, to apply for permits such as liquor permits for future pavilions, all to promote our culture.

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We are new; we don’t know each other very well yet. To get the incorporation process started, we’ve had to select officers from the original organizers:

President:  Dr. Li Lin
Vice President: Li Hong Song
Treasurer: John Huang
Chinese Secretary: Yiming Tang
English Secretary: Sue-On Hillman
Public Relations Officer: Sue-On Hillman
Board of Directors: Kenny Choy; Mark Dai, David Xu, Sunny Sun (Thomas Wei Zi, George Ge have been nominated, but we must ask them first)

As officers, none of us have any power. We hope to be your representatives. Problems should be brought to the attention of the committee, and not discussed wildly among us. There is no benefit in rumours – only harm to all of us.

These officers will stand for a maximum of one year or less. We do ask each and everyone in the Chinese community to start thinking about the selection of new officers. We need to have nomination from you to be followed by elections. Once we get started with the incorporation process, we can follow through with elections.

Meanwhile, I know we are all interested in how much money we made for the association! We must thank John Huang for keeping very detailed records. He has spent hours preparing the accounts and printed them for you to look at and share with those who could not attend tonight.

As you will see, there is money in the account. This money is to be used by the association for the welfare of all Chinese people. It is not to benefit Kenny, or Sue-On, or Li, or John, or Hong Song, or Peng Chen or any specific individual. The association wants to provide resources to help you integrate into your new life in Brandon.

Once again, thank you to everyone for all the hard work. Let’s give ourselves another round of applause. Enjoy yourselves. You deserve tonight!

BTW: Congratulations to Thomas on being selected by Maple Leaf as Assistant Supervisor

~ Sue-On Hillman

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WESTMAN CHINESE SITE
 

Contact
Bill & Sue-On Hillman
www.HillmanWeb.com
hillmans@westman.wava.ca