Press Release Activities for the first 6 months of 2022

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Members of the Executive Board of "VCL - France" wish a good summer and good holidays to those of you who can take advantage of this summer period, with a significant increase Covid-19 contamination in France, an alert in some major cities in Vietnam and no strong or weak signal in Cambodia and Lao.

The resumption of our activities has been significant, even if we have decided not to organize professional meetings "in public" between members and friends of "VCL-France" during the first 6 months of the year. We have not yet organized them (as it was during the 11 previous years before March 2020) because we simply wanted to prevent these public meetings from becoming the site of a focus of contamination head-on of the fairly slow improvement in the health situation for months and this, before the current upsurge in France.

From this fact, we rather reserve our time to devote ourselves to requests from our Active Members in the context of administrative and informational support and recommendation on the one hand, and to meet some of them as well as friends of VCL- France in a restricted circle to deepen promising exchanges on the other hand.

Since there were no public meetings to filter “live” relationships, we received many demands for support ranging from serious requests that deserved further investigation to those that were utopian or even a scam. Thus, we were able to respond to 32 seriously verified requests for support and only issued 12 formal recommendations, 7 of which were conclusive after having properly qualified the merits of the requests during this first semester.

At the same time, we did not respond favorably to the 61 requests deemed incompatible with our values and our purposes. Some well-known organizations suggested that we organize "Online" meetings in common or "Simply invite" our members to participate in the meetings which have been organized by themselves, and we have also rejected these proposals, because we have already given up organizing this type of meeting since 2021, after noticing that these lacked warmth on the one hand, and that the quality of the exchanges as well as their as their effectiveness were not as appreciable as those that we could have in ? face-to-face ? requiring bodily activities of full expression (speech, gestural reaction and human sensation) on the other hand.

Invited by other institutional and professional organizations, some Members of the Executive Board of VCL-France were able to participate in the 13 "face-to-face" meetings and to weave essential links to serenely promote VCL-France without superficial media hype and without the need to gesticulate superficially to show its existence. Otherwise, 3 of the members of the Executive Board were able to participate in a business trip to Cambodia which took place from June 4 to 11. The Executive Board was able to meet twice in "face-to-face" to take the necessary and collegial decisions for its proper functioning.

At the same time and by the simple fact of belonging to the VCL-France common network, thousands of Members were able to exchange directly between them and possibly achieve collaborations in business or in common and confidential actions from the moment that they have found common interests without needing to report to anyone.

And, thanks to our long-lasting multidisciplinary skills networks for more than 13 years, the permanent members of the Executive Board can provide assistance to our members and friends who requested it in the face of difficulties encountered in the course of their activities. and this, to direct them to those in the knowhow or to put them in touch or recommend them to other Members or friends of VCLFrance after the qualification of the merits and seriousness of the request.

For the 2nd semester, we will evolve our perceptions, accept the realities and consequences caused by the pandemic in societal relationships and not act completely as in the past time for future actions and to operate the different types of actions and meetings to be organized in the future. Indeed, the reality generated by the global pandemic which persists still and may well change completely, we must not refuse the need to consider more of the real as an unavoidable parameter, for the simple fear of having to change our ideas which were even good for a period. The future belongs to those who know how to decipher the real and who are able to change with it. Fortunately, the genetic code of VCL-France is completely in tune with the future because it has been characterized since its creation in 2009 by the triptych: “Openness, Agility and Reality”.

In short, VCL-France could take up the challenge of change if the Members of the Executive Board wanted to pursue the new common roadmap in an environment of qualitative rather than quantitative involvement, i.e. more targeted exchanges with predetermined objectives. and more selective and limited topics over a long period of a few years due to the consideration of economic uncertainties, health crises and more worrying societal concerns.

In the meantime, we are always listening to you to bring us closer to concrete needs that are both constant and moving.

Best regards and VCLFranchement yours.