Theos-Talk Archives (August 2010 Message tt00035)

The Brazil delegation to the World Congress was the largest with 90 members.
On the other hand, USA had 17 (yes, seventeen) members. The numbers from
Brazil simply tells that the Brazilian Section was well organized to
publicise the Congress among its members and coordinate the travel and other
arrangements. I suspect there was personal involvement of leadership and
that of the lodge officers in drumming up the delegates to the congress. Of
course all the members including officers of the Brazil Section paid their
own way to the Congress, which may not be the case with all other Sections.
I think all Sections can benefit from the experience of the Brazil Section
and I hope every Section gets really active for the next Congress.

The number of members registered for the congress is reported as 524, which
at first sight looked very good. But I was disappointed when I found out
that the 1966 Congress in Salzburg had 1,200 members with about 400 young
members.

With all the talk about all issues and rules and administration etc. the Big
Elephant in the room is the significant decline in the membership outside
India whereas there is a steady growth in India. None of the leaders want to
talk about this issue. On the other hand we hear about the sale of valuable
real estate in various countries as well as forced closing of lodges and the
usual expensive litigation that follows any forced closure.

I hope the experience and rejuvenation at Rome for the leaders who were able
to attend the Congress will spur them into actions to spur the growth in
membership and I hope to see more participation in the next World Congress.

MKR


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]