1) Financial briefing from AIDA Treasurer Sasa Jeremic

The financial reports for 2020 are ready: Total incomes are a little lower than last year, but considering the situation with the lockdown, the results are excellent.

Youth course: as most instructors couldn`t work, they invested in their education and the Youth instructor certification was the new category of incomes in 2020

Full reports will be sent shortly for the Assembly vote

 

2)  Follow-up of previous Assembly meetings 

2.1 Uros Kojic, Sport Officer spoke about the situation with the World Championship

2.1.1 Uros asked for feedback about the possibility of the athletes to travel for training in this period in the countries present at the meeting and concluded to send an email request to all Assembly before taking the decision to set or postpone the 2021 Depth World Championship. The cut-off date for the decision is 15^th of June

2.1.2 Wild cards – Based on an earlier suggestion from AIDA UK, the Board proposed to consider 2 years (2019 and 2020) for the designation of the 2021 depth wild cards as due to COVID19 the year 2020 didn’t give equal chances for athletes to qualify. After a short discussion, the Assembly concluded to accept the recommendation and Uros will implement it.

 

 2.2 Recruitment

The AIDA President, Alexandru Russu, introduced at the meeting Ekaterina Korotkova who won the recruitment process initiated by the Board after the last meeting. Ekaterina is now acting as Executive Assistant to learn the daily processes and train for the General Administrator function when she will be able to handle alone the day to day work.  

Alexandru also presented the work AIDA does today and initiated a discussion for a dedicated customer support position. The participants concluded this position is needed to cover the existing volume of daily questions and the Board will prepare for implementation. During the General Admin recruitment process that included the customer support requirement, the Board already identified several valuable candidates and if the yearly cost is below 10 000 Eur, no additional Assembly vote is required, so this project could be immediately implemented based on the candidate evaluation already established.

The next positions planned in the Strategy and included in the provisional budget are the “Education content manager” and the “Event coordinator” (in charge of organizing the AIDA WChs, medical conference and any other events organized directly by AIDA).

 

2.3 FEMR Course

AIDA Medical Officer, Oleg Melikhov brought the subject of the FEMR optimization and asked the Board about the direction it want to give to the course. Alexandru mentioned the main purpose of an inhouse First Aid course is to respond to the internal requirements for the AIDA instructors and instructor assistants. Yulia added that today this requirement is covered in overwhelming majority by the PADI certifications, and the first FEMR optimization step is to make a better offer at this level. More advanced levels are also considered as part of a modular approach.

 

2.4. GDPR

Following their presentation during the April Assembly meeting, the Board delegated this project to AIDA Germany

 

2.5 NGO in China

Following the intervention of the AIDA China President and the conclusion of the March Assembly meeting, the Board contacted a series of legal firms and selected a lawyer in China to follow-up with the Chinese authorities on the requirements imposed in order for AIDA to be able to continue its activity in the country.

 

2.6. Diving away from the line

The Education Committee gave a negative feedback on the suggestion to add diving away from the line in the beginner courses (AIDA1 or AIDA2) because on the first 2 course days the students need to focus on equalization and the line is the main element for a safe and controlled equalization.

 

2.7 The requirements of 20 AIDA4 certifications create bottleneck for IT promotion.

As follow-up for the issue raised at the previous Assembly meeting, the alternative discussed now was the creation of an IT course.

As similar education needs exist on the Judge side also, the IT courses shall be implemented on the same principles for all categories across the entire organization.

 

2.8 Technical Office  

Guillame Laslo-Toth, Technical Committee coordinator, presented to the Assembly the benefits of the integrated approach to the AIDA rules system 

2.8.1 Facilitation of instructor renewal in case of prolonged inactivity:  replace the requirement to retake the instructor course with the requirement to do a refresher consisting of an online theoretical examination and a physical capacity check done locally through the AIDA Judge network or the AIDA ranking

To prove they are still fit to dive the candidates can present results from the AIDA competition system or have their renewal minimas certified by any local AIDA Judge. The judges participating to the instructor renewals will judge their performances and will receive experience points just like for the AIDA competition.

 

2.9 Facilitation of Instructor crossover process

A pilot crossover program is designed by the Education Committee and will be tested before the public release scheduled for this summer.

 

3) Direct questions to the Board and open discussions 

3.1 Peru national organization renewal

To be reactivated in the AIDA Assembly, AIDA Peru paid the overdue membership fees for 2019, 2020, 2021 and now it is restored under the management of the same group that was initially voted by the Assembly.

 

3.2 Instructor renewal fee

The instructors who paid the yearly fees for 2020 and could not use it because of the COVID19 situation, can transfer it for 2021 which means they don’t need to pay the 2021 fee. They still need to upload a valid insurance and a first aid certification that is less than 2 years old in order to be activated in the AIDA system.

 

The next Assembly meeting will be on the last Saturday of May - the 29th at 1pm UTC