Post by mrfiremouth on Jun 27, 2009 22:46:12 GMT -5
Hi everyone!
I am Rich Dietz a member of the American Cichlid Association!
I am currently contacting all clubs across America to get involved with the ACA!
In 2007, Ted Judy our ACA Liaison sent out this email to many clubs...
Dear Aquarium Hobbyists, November 29, 2007
The American Cichlid Association (ACA) is reaching out to you in hopes of establishing a relationship between your organization and ours. The ACA has programs in place to help aquarium societies promote your events, and new opportunities for your members to be recognized by the ACA for their work with cichlids will be started in 2008.
The ACA/ZooMed Speakers Program provides up to $250 and ZooMed product donations to organizations that schedule an ACA Speaker at one of their events. More information about this program can be found on the ACA website at www.cichlid.org/Speakers.html .
The ACA also has a program for sanctioning the cichlid classes of your shows. The top cichlids will earn their owners recognition from the ACA and points towards the ACA's annual Show Champion of the Year award. Please go to www.cichlid.org/ShowSanctioning.html for more information about participating in this program.
The ACA maintains an online forum where members and nonmembers meet to discuss their hobby. A section of the forum is dedicated to the promotion of other societies' events, and you are more than welcome post notices of your club's meetings, shows, swaps, auctions or any event you want to promote. The forum can be found at cichlid.ipbhost.com/index.php . The forum also has a calendar feature that can be used to post event dates farther into the future. Feel free to use that feature as well.
One of the new programs starting is 2008 is the ACA Cichlid Breeder Recognition. We want to recognize the members of your society who are breeding cichlids and submitting them to your Breeder Award Points program. Each year we will ask each club, that wants to participate, for a list of their top five cichlid breeders (based upon number of different species bred) to be recognized by the ACA. All of the breeders submitted will receive a certificate of appreciation, and your club's top breeder will be recognized for that achievement as well. The one person submitted (from all clubs) with the most species spawned will earn the ACA Cichlid Breeder of the Year award. We will also be recognizing the top cichlid breeding clubs, and will give a separate award for cichlid only and general aquarium clubs.
The other program beginning next year is the ACA Cichlid Writers' Awards. We want to recognize the members of your club who are supporting your club's publication with submissions of articles about cichlids. We will ask each participating club to submit up to five articles, which we will categorize and judge. Awards will be given to the top three articles in each category.
The members of the ACA Board of Trustees, of which I am one, are all members of local aquarium societies. We appreciate all of the effort that goes into running your club. Our goals with the ACA Club Liaison Program are to provide more opportunities for your members to get recognition for their individual efforts, help promote your events and also encourage your members to keep cichlids.
If your club would like to participate in these programs, then I need a contact person with an e-mail address that can act as the liaison between your club and the ACA. This person will receive a monthly e-mail from me with ACA news and reminders of upcoming events and ACA programs. Once a year, in the Spring, the liaison will be asked to organize a packet of information to send to me. This packet will have all of the information I need to determine the Breeder and Writer Recognition awards.
Please present these programs to your membership. If they want to participate, then ask for a volunteer to be liaison and have them e-mail me at mesquito_ted@yahoo.com . I will send that person more specific details about the new awards programs in January.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Ted R. Judy
ACA BOT
ACA Club Liaison
mesquito_ted@yahoo.com
This is still available today to the GLCS!
I am currently looking for an GLCS member that is also an ACA member to be the go between the ACA Liaison and the GLCS! This way each month we can exchange news, calendar dates, speaker schedules, and any club announcements/events between both of our forums!!! I would also be interested in a banner swap for both of us!
Currently we have not been exchanging information with clubs as we should. I believe if we have one of your members and our ACA Liaison team up we will be able to achieve much, much more!
I would like to be able to drop by each month as an Ambassador of the ACA to check up on this! I really want to work with the GLCS and build a strong relationship with this club!
Please discuss this with the club and LMK!
I see many of my friends on this forum already!
I hope we can make this work!
Rich