President's Speech to Queen's Birthday Party

10th June 2009

These are serious times. The global financial crisis has affected us all and concentrated our thoughts on the most vulnerable amongst us. It is the time for BAM to act as a catalyst to bring together our community and now, more than ever, the qualities of friendship and support are needed.

We have been working very closely with the British Consulate and last Friday Simon Taylor (British Consul, Marseilles), Eric Blair (Honorary British Consul, Monaco) and I attended 4 very informative meetings at the Princess Grace Hospital, the Mairie, the Foundation Hector Otto and with the Directeur de L’Action Sanitaire et Sociale and we hope to be in a position to report fully to Members soon on these very productive meetings.

In these difficult financial times it is essential that BAM does not work in isolation and offers every assistance to the Monegasque authorities, which we hope will ultimately benefit the resident Anglophone community here in Monaco and I would like to thank Simon and Eric for their continued support with helping BAM achieve this aim.

With our charitable hat firmly on, we have arranged for UK charity Elisabeth Finn to run a training workshop this Saturday for our Community Service volunteers. We feel their professional expertise will be of great benefit in preparing our volunteers to help our community cope with an uncertain future.

I have always felt that it is vital for BAM to integrate fully with other Monegasque associations and we shall again be fielding a team for “No Finish Line” and trying to better the €1000 we raised for children in 2008. We are going to have our own stand at the Forum of Associations this autumn to promote BAM locally and we continue to work closely with the CDE to help British companies and individuals re-locate to the Principality.

We were much honored to have received a letter from HSH Prince Albert of Monaco supporting BAM’s charitable work and events which promote links within the English-speaking community and ensure that Members integrate fully into the Principality.(Published in the November 2008 edition of BAM News and on the website here.)

With integration in mind, BAM News and our website will continue to keep Members up to date on the Principality’s news, associations and events. Members will see that in June we publicised prominently the Monegasque government’s initiative, in co-operation with Action Innocence, the Justice Department and Monaco Telecom, to install a screening device that blocks internet access to child pornography sites.

On a lighter note we are not alone in re-vamping our website. Earlier this year HM The Queen re-launched the British Monarchy website which was first launched in 1997 before being re-vamped in 2001. The new Royal website has a more user friendly and accessible design and utilizes a number of new technological features such as Google maps, integration with the Royal diary of engagements and with the Royal channel on YOUTUBE. Well, the BAM website is not so advanced, as I suspect we have a smaller budget, but the Committee is researching ways of making our website more interactive and we are setting up a BAM Forum for Members to communicate with each other and the Committee. Together with our varied events programmes, we hope these initiatives will assist us to make BAM a vibrant community association.

I would like to thank you all for your continued support for BAM.