Constellations first Lustrum : a purification ?

[Marlou]

Today, 7 December 2009, is a grey and rainy day in my part of the world. And the day risks to go by without further mentioning. But it is not that we have no reason to celebrate. Exactly 5 years ago on a day that was exactly as grey as today, eleven people came together in a dark meeting room just outside Geneva. They lightened up that day with a vision of a Constellation of connected stars supporting each other in becoming AIDS Competent. They made that vision concrete with the foundation of the Constellation.

So today we celebrate in silence our fifth anniversary, our first lustrum. That silence is fine. I hear the silence as a warm silence of a community that doesnot need much words because it is busy (very busy) doing.

Earlier this week Geoff with his typical GP touch pointed me to the original meaning of the word Lustrum: “A ceremonial purification of the entire ancient Roman population after the census every five years”, and asked me jokingly if that is what we have in mind with the first Lustrum of the Constellation. I laughed, shrugged my shoulders and turned back to my priority of the day: the work plan of 2010.

Is it co-incidence that high on our priority for activities in 2010 is the ‘membership management’: working on a fresh pool of coaches and members; that a blended learning platform is available where new and old groups of facilitators can refresh their skills on facilitating the AIDS Competence approach; that we aim to understand better what the Constellations equivalent of the entire ancient Roman population is; that a group of members wants to go into deep in studying the roots and the history of what is binding our community: SALT?
Are we purifying a little here?

Pure or not, on the day of our first lustrum we have an inspired group of wonderful
hero’s who contribute to the mission of the Constellation each in their own context, with their own means and their own talents. Can we shout it out?



Marlou

[Jean-Louis Lamboray]

Many thanks for reminding us, Marlou!
May the Constellation be reborn every day to ever greater puriity.
JL

[Ian Campbell]

May I add? A characteristic of a movement is that things happen and no particular person can be seen to be dominantly responsible. So the Constellation must be that way inclined, at the very least, because so many are responsible for the next steps that have happened and that will happen . A sign of health and life, to me.

Thanks Marlou

Ian

[Geoff Parcell]

When we got together 5 years ago we created a dream. We have realised and indeed exceeded some parts of that dream. But there is still much left we can do.

I'm wondering, if we were to look back at the end of 2014 what is our dream today and what have we achieved?

For me I think it is that every initiative to eradicate AIDS has an element of Community Competence built into it, whether or not he Constellation are involved. It is that there are no victims or service providers but people working together to improve the quality of the life of the community. What else would you include in your dream?