The six months from April to September saw membership in the GPNW grow by 57.
“The EXCO that took over in March identified the need to grow membership and to increase member engagement and participation as our important priorities for 2020” Peter Flentov, the GPNW Chair, explained.
Mr. Flentov went on to say: “It gratifying to see the increased interest in the Watch. More importantly, a record number of members have supported the GPNW financially this year, which has allowed us to do a number of strategic projects” including a redesign of the GPNW website and the licensing of Buzzer.
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Original Piece from the October 2020 Newsletter:
While the past six-month period has not been without its challenges and distractions, it has been a particularly successful period for the GPNW.
The current GPNW EXCO took office at the end of February and identified the needs to grow membership and to increase member engagement and participation as the most important priorities for 2020. To achieve this, we identified the need to increase the GPNW’s relevance to members and the community.
As part of that process, the GPNW adopted a new Mission Statement, which expanded the objective of the GPNW to include increased emphasis on police accountability.
We are pleased to report that our membership grew from 249 in April to 306 at the beginning of October, a 23% increase.
It is not known whether all of our members still qualify for membership of the GPNW. Members who have moved out of Sector 1 cannot, according to the GPNW Constitution, continue to be members of the GPNW, but unless they notify us that they have moved we do not know that they have ceased to be valid members of the GPNW.
As part of the upcoming membership renewal process outlined in the Constitution, members will need to confirm that they live, work or own property in Sector 1 as part of the process of reapplying for membership. We hope that all current members who still qualify will decide to reapply for membership in the GPNW. In further good news, a record number of members have contributed financially to the GPNW in 2020!
This financial support has allowed us to go ahead with a number of strategic projects:
- The introduction of Buzzer to the area represented a significant expansion of the channels available to report criminal and suspicious activity; with an annual cost of R32,400 this represented a significant financial commitment which would not be possible without the financial support of you, our members.
- The redesign of the GPNW website to update and expand the information and resources that will be available to members. The new website should be ready for launch in the near future.
- The completion of much-needed maintenance of the GPNW Radio Network.
We also increased the frequency of our communications to members and held our first ever webinar on smart security camera systems. Regrettably, distractions over the past three months reduced the frequency with which we were able to communicate with our members.
The webinar on smart security cameras was well received (a recording of the webinar will be available on our new website) and we are pleased to note that a number of residents have collaborated to install smart security cameras in their street.
We were planning on launching Zone Patrols but the COVID Lockdown and the aforementioned distractions have not allowed us to focus on setting up the process and protocols needed to get these going. Hopefully in the near future, we will be able to re-focus on what we believe is an important initiative to improve security in our area.