Statement of Adrienne Nassau President of the 1818 Society to Members.
Greetings, Fellow Members
You know that we in the 1818 Society are a very fortunate lot. Although we are not getting any younger, most of us enjoy a high degree of prosperity (thanks to our excellent pensions) and good health (thanks in part to our health benefits). As a group, World Bank retirees live quite a bit longer than our peers in theUnited Statesor in the UN network. The Bank actuary told us that a woman retiring from the Bank at age 60 can expect to live to be over 90, and a man only a few years less. So we are a hardy lot.
Speaking of people over 90, I bring you greetings from Burke Knapp, who could not attend this year, but is still traveling and enjoying his retirement.
Being over 50 also entitles us to some extra benefits. I recently came across a list of the perks of being over 50. Since nearly all of us are over 50, I thought you would enjoy hearing about them. They are:
- Kidnappers are not very interested in us.
- In a hostage situation, we are likely to be released first.
- People no longer view as as hypochondriacs
- There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
- We have a party and the neighbors don’t even realize it.
- We no longer think of speed limits as a challenge
- Our eyes won’t get much worse
- Our investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
- Our supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable size.
Our Events
Our bylaws state our purpose as a social, educational and humanitarian one. As such, we provide a social link among Bank retirees both here in Washington and around the world. More than half of our 5 thousand plus members live in the Washington area, and during the past year we sponsored nearly monthly get-togethers, include two luncheons with distinguished speakers, a summer dinner, a reception at the US botanical gardens, an arboretum tour at azalea time, and several tours of museum exhibits. I would like to give a special thanks to Cathie Fogle, Hayley Goris, Frona Hall and Patricia Moran, as well as Rosemary Harris, Cathy Read, Eva Meigher, and Guy de Lusignan for their help in organizing and administering these functions. I would also like to express my appreciation to Alex Keyserlingk and Chuck Ziegler for organizing this annual meeting and dinner.
Our chapters around the world –in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Chileand Florida have continued to sponsor elaborate weekend reunions, with wonderful dinners, accommodations, and tours, which all of us are welcome to join. I myself attended a splendid dinner in St. Petersburg, Florida with the members of the Florida chapter; and I attended the UK chapter reunion in Ludlow, England. What a privilege it was to walk around the gardens of PowysCastle with the Andrew and Daphne Spurling, horticultural experts par excellence!
In addition to our chapters, two communities of interest, the water sector group and an IFC group, have continued to have successful luncheons and reunions. These events permitted sector members to stay in touch with their colleagues and with professional developments in their fields. In fact, the water group is planning a luncheon with a speaker on the Bank’s work on sanitation this coming Friday.
Our Participation in Bank Clubs
The Society and or its members also continue to participate in a variety of Bank related functions and clubs, including staff week, the celebration of cultures, the chorus and orchestra, the family network, the Marco Polo Society, the Ski Club – and the list goes on.
Tapping the Professional Expertise of Bank Retirees
Our members collectively possess one of the largest reservoir of development expertise in the world, because a mature development practitioner cannot be produced in a university or in the private sector but in development institutions such as the Bank. The Society has worked hard in the last year to find ways to utilize this expertise to help poor people around the world. Some of these efforts have been ad-hoc, such as the help that we gave to Bank management in finding volunteers to help out after the tsunami. Mr. J. Shivakumar, whom many of you know, heads a group that is working to formalize some schemes that will put this resource to work in an organized fashion. Specifically, we are working to get a pilot mentoring program started, and we have had some initial discussions on using retirees to teach WBI courses outside of the main population centers in developing countries. Let’s hope that we can report on some successful experiments this time next year.
Bank Benefits
On the benefit side, your interests are addressed by our excellent representatives to the various benefit committees: Stephen Eccles, representative and Ricardo Halperin, alternate, to the Pension Finance Committee; Eva Meigher, representative, and Alex Keyserlingk, alternate, to the Pension Benefit Administration Committee. Hayley Goris, John Kendall and others have been very active in working with Bank staff on insurance matters. You will hear the details of their work elsewhere in this program.
Let me just mention a couple of matters regarding benefits here. Last week, we had our annual meeting with the Vice President of Human Resources, Xavier Coll, to discuss benefit and related matters. We are grateful that he listened carefully to what we had to say, and promised to follow up on our concerns very actively. You will hear details on the issues later, which include complaints about the service of Aetna Global overseas, the need for more information and choice on long term insurance, and our desire to have Bank retirees play a more active role in preserving institutional memory and in promoting international development.
Hayley Goris, who has so ably chaired our Insurance Committee for many years, has decided to resign from active duty – though she agreed to stay in the reserves for some time to come. With her typical dedication, effectiveness, and attention to detail, she identified a successor – John Kendall – and worked with him for many months, so that he is fully apprised of the work involved. I would like to give my personal thanks – and the heartfelt thanks of the Society – to Hayley for her wonderful work on all of our behalves.
The Retirement and Assisted Living Committee
Our Retirement and Assisted Living Committee, headed by Hazel Denton, has continued their efforts. In the past year, they held two seminars on continuing care retirement communities; and one of their members, Sandra Hadler, has published a handbook on what to look for in retirement communities – including some detailed matrices comparing various communities in the Washington area. They are continuing their work with a seminar to be held on November 1 on home care options.
Friends in Need
We have revived our Friends in Need network, and updated information on community services in the Washingtonarea. Our webpage has details.
Society Publications
Our new editor, Jim Casey, has taken firm hold of the newsletter, and I know that all of you have enjoyed his efforts during the past year. The print shop headed by Jane Bloodworth has helped us tremendously on the production of the newsletter, and we really appreciate this. Thanks also to our member Jillian Ross and to the many other contributors. Please keep the articles coming in to share with our fellow retirees. We need more contributions on life after the Bank and on chapter activities. Your remembrances also are a wonderful tribute to our colleagues who are no longer with us.
Anne Vaughn, the “mother” of our bi-monthly bulletin has passed along the editorship to Sverrir Segurdsson. The bulletin has been widely praised as an excellent way to provide timely announcements and news relevant to retirees.
We have also upgraded our webpage, and Alex Keyserlingk has taken over as our webmaster. Our webpage has a new and very simple address: worldbank.org/1818. We have a number of new features, including some four discussion groups, information on privileges and services, and announcements of some Bank events. We also post Society publications on the web. Discussion groups, by the way, are known in computerese as “blogs.” Thus far, we are disappointed that more members do not contribute to the discussion groups. We think that there are two reasons for this: a) not enough of you access our web page – perhaps because you do not know how useful it is; and b) you have retained your Bank staff habit of not committing yourself to writing until you have expressed yourself perfectly. Please try to get over this habit and give us your thoughts through the various discussion groups.
The Retiree Directory
One of our main volunteer activities is to issue the directory of retirees, and to maintain the database that underlies it. Thanks to Anne Vaughn, Mieko Matsuda, Olive Nash, Bob Barger, Chuck Vaughn, and others for their help in maintaining this rather complex system
Administration
The Society has started revising our policies and procedures in several ways during the past year. In response to comments by our new auditor, Howard Jones, and our capable treasurer, Xavier Simon, we have updated and formalized our financial procedures to establish clearer separation of functions. We also set up a committee headed by Hans Wyss to review financial and budgetary policies, and we have established a committee headed by Alex Keyserlingk to review our membership criteria.
Our office continues to be extremely busy. Thank goodness that we have someone as competent and diplomatic as Annabel Bracher to be our part-time office manager. Aside from the office manager position, we rely totally on volunteers for carrying out our activities. Volunteering is an excellent way of keeping in touch with one another – and it’s fun as well! Please sign up. There are forms on the table outside this room, and our volunteer coordinator, Charlotte Jones, is eager to add your name to our list of active volunteers.
Finally, we need your ideas, your opinions and your initiative in helping the Society become a useful organization to its members. We know that you are interested, because you came to this meeting. Please help us in carrying out our activities in the coming year.