Dear colleagues! Warm greetings from Moldova! Hope my message finds you well! I am currently involved as an international expert in a big project for the Ministry of Education of Liberia and will have to spend more than three weeks there starting from May 15. The NGO I run here in Moldova is also involved in many national projects which require very much of my direct involvement: monitoring and evaluation. In this context, it is quite a challenge to find additional time for ALAC activities when I am full-time involved in so many activities.That is why, it is my duty to inform you all that due to the many projects I am currently in charge of, I have to unfortunately resign from my ALAC position. It has not been an easy decision to make at all! I just can not stay in ALAC any longer just for the sake of being on ALAC/AtLarge – I prefer to be effective and to produce impact. And this is smth for which I simply don’t have time now! I must say that ALAC has been a great experience for me and I am truly thankful to everyone on ALAC who have been day by day, side by side during this last year. I have learned a lot from this professional, hard-working, committed and culturally diverse community. I want to thank my European colleagues: Annette and WolfgangKleinwächterin the first place, for their confidence in me and for believing that I can bring something new to ALAC, even if I am from Eastern Europe:)! I am very thankful to Cheryl and Izumi for their openness and for their professional support on the initiatives I launched on ALAC. I am happy for having worked with my European colleagues: Sebastian and Wolf and all my respect for all EURALO board membersfor the patience, passion and possible solutions they have been trying to identify in order to make EURALO start working on policy related issues in the region; My thanks go also for my North American colleagues: Alan, Robert and Beau – for their professional work and support whenever needed; Jose Ovidio, Carlos, Hawa– my admiration for the effort and time you invest in ALAC – I know it has not been easy for you given the language barriers that you have been facing so far; Mohamed, Fatimata, Vanda and Thu Hue –many thanks for your energy, time and devotion and for your friendly support on the ideas I was promoting on ALAC/Atlarge. Many thanks to current ALAC liaisons: Hong, Jacqueline and Wendy; And of course, my many thanks toNick- I know it is not an easy task to handle the communication and collaboration with such a big and diverse community. Thank you for your support throughout this year. I know ICANN staff will do much more in order to support ALAC/AtLarge become a viable and strong community now with more staff members in place. I am glad I managed to bring to ALAC/AtLarge some ideas and practices that go back to my professional background. Because I strongly believe that “A policy is a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s).” back in Puerto Rico (my first ICANN meeting) I came to the conclusion that ALAC /At Large needs to have a set of mechanisms via which these policies are identified, promoted and evaluated. These are the few things that I have managed to do in the period of June 2007 – present: -I initiated the “OneDay” Workshop for ALAC/AtLarge. -I have designed the agenda and conducted together with Cheryl and Izumi two “OneDay” workshops before ICANN meetings in Los-Angeles and New Delhi. -I have compiled OneDay Evaluation Reports, based on the feedback from ALAC/AtLarge members who have participated in these meetings; -Back in New Delhi, I made a statement on behalf of ALAC on Organizational Development; -I elaborated the ALAC Organizational Development document that focuses on several components of the ALAC’s developments; -I proposed a document on “What is an ALAC/AtLarge” Working Group – and the document was used for planning activities per certain working groups during the OneDay workshop in New Delhi; -I have recently transferred some of the good practices that came as a result of this Organizational Development processes on ALAC into the GNSO Improvements Report. -Along with all the above, I organized a three days training program on Internet Governance and Community Development in Moldova (www.cmb.md/igf [http://www.cmb.md/igf]), during which we had a special session on ALAC/AtLarge @ ICANN. Training participants were 16 young leaders representing civil society, business sector, international community and the Government. -I have had several discussions with APTI members from Romania, as they were our project partners in the above Program, and as a result we have recently received their application in order to become an accredited ALS structure @ICANN from our part of the world. All the reports and documents I produced have been available since produced at https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?organisational_development [https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?organisational_development] . To conclude, I want to encourage you to contact me/stay in touch in case you are interested in working on projects/initiatives dealing with ICT for Development, Access to Knowledge, Internet Governance, Community Development, IDNs, Education, Virtual Embassies, Climate Change, etc. both regionally and/or internationally! Good luck with all your initiatives and all the best! As ever, Veronica Veronica Cretu, President, CMB Training Center CMB - Promoting innovations in Communication, Management and Business Chisinau, Moldova www.cmb.md [http://www.cmb.md/] www.cmb.md/igf [http://www.cmb.md/igf] +373 22 27 45 04, 273196 email:vcretu@cmb.md [javascript:openWin('/WorldClient.dll?Session=EJQQNER&View=Compose&To=vcretu@cmb.md&New=Yes','Compose',800,600,'yes');] VeronicaC@diplomacy.edu [javascript:openWin('/WorldClient.dll?Session=EJQQNER&View=Compose&To=VeronicaC@diplomacy.edu&New=Yes','Compose',800,600,'yes');]