On Friday evening when we arrived at the hotel,  we had the opportunity to meet with some trustees and members of other groups, which was helpful in identifying some new ideas to work towards improving our activities in East Kent.

Saturday started with a short welcome speech by Alun Owen Chair of the Trustees of the Association.

Sally light then spoke of what we had achieved in 2016 and how we can help.  She used 2 excellent graphics for this and these are reproduced below.  These present the gist of her speech much better than any words.

Chris James spoke about the Association’s in complementing statuary services, collaborative working and the MND Costs Campaign.

Steve Bell spoke about the “What You Should Expect” an excellent small booklet giving brief details of what a pwMND should expect from the NICE Guidelines on MND and the Audit Tool to help assess how various bodies are doing in compliance with the guidalines.

We broke into groups which covered subjects like money for nothing fund raising, care update, the journey from awareness to action and local and regional finance.

We broke for lunch and the opportunity to look around the various stalls, we were particularly impressed by REMAP, a charity which makes custom made equipment to help disabled people live more independent lives.  Please visit www.remap.org.uk

The AGM followed, during which our own Katy Styles was elected as a Trustee and Richard Coleman was elected as Chair of the Trustees.

The keynote speech was  delivered by Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi.  This speech was one of the most impressive I have ever been present at and I recommend everyone to look at it here https://www.facebook.com/pg/mndassociation/videos/?ref=page_internal click the link to MNDA Research under All Videos.