Our first Conference Call of 2009

We held our first bi-monthly conference call of the year 2009 today and much was discussed about our goals and expectations for the upcoming year. The topics discussed were the following,


*Migration to our new forum
*Invitation to create personal mini-blogs in Multiply
*Pending publications
*Establishment of a Charity to fund research

Migration to our new forum

In this call, we discussed at length our upcoming migration to the new forum with all its new features. Some of us went to see it and were very pleased with this new forum that Kristen and Matt created to try to meet our needs as prescribed by Arun. The speed with which this forum has been built due to time constraints is indeed impressive. It was so impressive that it turns out that a few of us rushed to register before it was ready and open for registration.

Since our three-hour long chat Arun, Kristen, and I held yesterday in the forum’s chat room, I suggested to the group that we hold bi-weekly chat sessions at this site so that our international and U.S. friends who can’t afford to join us in our conference calls could do so in this setting. This will only serve to bring us all more together. The idea was received very enthusiastically, and these chat sessions will begin as soon as the forum is opened to the whole community.

Kristen has informed us that the photo gallery section has not yet been completed, but photos can be posted within a post. We currently have the opportunity to store our photos, videos, and personal blogs in Multiply, and link to them from our new forum for now.

Invitation to create personal mini-blogs

After having finished writing poems, essays, and short stories for our anthology, Glenna suggested we initiate a new project to raise social awareness by organizing a social awareness campaign to educate the public of our condition and its negative social implications. Each member of our community is therefore encouraged to create his or her own personal blog, or mini-blog, in Multiply making it as unique as each individual in our community is unique, in an effort to give us an opportunity to communicate whatever we think is important about our condition to each other and to the world.

There is no prescribed format to follow and no need to limit ourselves to any specific topic or style. We can continue our literary expression in our mini-blogs as we did in our anthology. We can either take the personal approach as Kristen http://www.kristenjugueta.com/ and Olive http://copperolivegreen.multiply.com/ did with their respective blogs; or we can take a more scientific approach as we originally did with this blog liking to scientific articles.

Your personal blog can evolve as you evolve in whichever direction you want, as ours did by also becoming a community organizing support site of meet-ups and conference calls as well. Of course, pictures and photos, whether of ourselves, interesting places, YouTube videos, or media clips are encouraged in personal blogs, as a picture says a thousand words. In addition to our anthology, the more blogs are created by sufferers, including mini-blogs, the more information we will have at our disposal to work with in our social awareness campaign.

Pending publications

There are two publications in the works, our anthology and an inspirational book written by our own, Glenna Gonzalez. If Glenna writes as well as she speaks, I’m certain that her book will captivate the readers and take them on a journey.

Establishment of a Charity to fund research

Our discuss then shifted to the organizational effort of our charity fundraising and research effort for 2009. The objective of establishing a non-profit organization is to promote and raise funds for scientific and medical research of the causes and treatment of metabolic disorders and conditions and secondary causes of localized and generalized body odor disorders and conditions in order to find a cure.

Due to limited funds, we begin with the establishment of a Limited by Guarantee Company in the UK, http://www.sfsgo.com/guaranteecompany.asp#1#1, which will cost £195 (approximately $295.00/U.S.), including the yearly services of a Company Secretary. Our long-term goal is to establish a Charity in the UK, http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/, which will cost £1,000 ($1,510.00) to £1,500 ($2,265.00). Our long-term goal is to extend this Charity to an international level with branches or affiliates located in many countries of the world.

Once the Limited by Guarantee Company is established, a business bank account with HSBC will be opened, and a PayPal account and linked to the company website and my blog in an effort to fundraise. The proceeds of our anthology will be deposited in this charity bank account. Since we don’t expect the initial donations to be substantial at first, we hope to be able to organize research at a smaller scale funded by the non-profit company. As we grow and enough funding is obtained to register as a Charity, we will then pursue a more assertive fundraising campaign for sizeable research grants from various governments and private Foundations.

We have many goals to fulfill by the end of this year. In December of 2009, we will again take pride in our accomplishments as we did this past December of 2008.