What is the Council of Councils?

To tell about the Council of Councils (CofC) correctly, I need to start at the beginning. The beginning was 1977; members of the Florida Van Council seeing the start of the decline of vanning in the southeast U.S., put together the idea for a meeting of the Councils in the southeast. They put together the first one in February of 1978; just the active Councils of the southeast were there. Little did they realize at the time, that the decline they were seeing was taking place across the country. The first bunch of years they met in February at various places in the southeast states, and exchanged information about what they had found out to make vanning better, in membership and at the events.

By the early 80's other Councils had noticed what these Councils were doing and saw an opportunity to further communication between all. From those early days, the CofC has grown from a small beginning to a membership that stretches across international boundaries, even across the ocean.

Now, what is the CofC? We, as vanners, are all individuals. We join together in van clubs, for the betterment of the group, and united is stronger. Our local Councils are there for the same reasons, and they are made up of individual van clubs. The Council of Councils is the organization that accepts councils into its membership, just as Councils have van clubs for their membership and clubs have vanners for their membership. The name explains it: a Council made up of Councils.

The Council of Councils meets once a year, in February, to discuss things happening in each Council's own little part of the world. We discuss how to make vanning grow, and how to make events bigger and/or better. Hopefully, the information that is discussed at CofC will help all of vanning. Information and things talked about at CofC is meant to be taken back to the local Councils membership by the reps, and then back to the clubs.

Working in this way, we believe that the Council of Councils can make a difference. But, only if we, as individuals, remember what the Council of Councils Meeting really is ... an organizations business meeting. We, as vanners, do manage to have some fun over the weekend, we are, after all, vanners. But, the meeting is business. The business of vanning. We are all there to do one thing, make vanning better. Anybody that tries to make the Meeting anything else is just plain dead wrong. And I would hate to see vanning be dead as a result.

What can you expect at the Council of Councils? Well, every year for the past bunch, the meeting has grown in size. So, expect about 30 Councils from the U.S., Canada and England to send reps. Most of these Councils will be represented by more than just two people also. There will be a bunch of meetings; most you won't have to be concerned about though. The National Truck-in Board meets at CofC to decide about the Nats, making things better for our greatest van-in (they have 2 or 3 meetings themselves). The Council of Councils Board will be having meeting Friday and Saturday also. There may, possibly, be other small groups getting together. The hosts for the upcoming Nats will have a hospitality room to show you what's in store for the National Truck-in.

And of course, there will be the CofC Meeting itself. It will take place Saturday morning, and will run for a good bunch of the day. It is held as a "semi-open" meeting. Meaning that all attendees to the Council of Councils are invited to attend, BUT, only two representatives from each official Council present will be able to sit up front and actually speak for their Council, at least at the morning session. The other attendees will sit behind the reps tables in our gallery, able to watch, listen and hopefully learn. There will be a break about halfway through so that non-reps can remind reps about some forgotten item of business. And there will be an open discussion portion of the meeting, when we look forward to hearing the views and ideas of all attending.

Well, that should about do it. We are looking forward to seeing all that are interested in truly bettering vanning at the next Council of Councils Meeting.