The following is the text of our Chairman's address to our AGM on 15th March this year:
We are not succeeding in our mission. We have been relatively successful in the past, but not now, for some reason or other. To illustrate this, in 1995 – the year of the Oedipus AGM - no fewer than 47 couples attended First Stage events run by AME. Some of those couples may be here today. Since then there has been a sharp fall off in attendance at our events, and with the exception of 2002 it has been down to single figures every year since 1999. This may in part be due to under-recording on our database, but nevertheless the conclusion is inescapable – something has changed somewhere. There are a number of reasons that we have suggested, some of which are external to AME, but there are others that are inextricably tied up with the structure of AME itself.
When I took over as Chair, with Judith, I said that I did not intend to cast myself in the role of undertaker. I said that I hoped that AME still had a good future, and the previous October we had had a very well-attended Leaders' weekend at Charney Manor. But I also said that at my age I did not intend to remain Chair for more than three years!
You may recall that until last year our constitution required that at lest three members of our Executive Committee should be either accredited or provisionally accredited Leader couples. We had to revise this figure to one, to legitimise the position where Judith and I were the only accredited Leaders on the Committee. We are now in the position where none of our existing Leaders feels able to take over. We have either all served our turn, or want to move on. And let's facing it, none of us is getting any younger.
I mentioned that AME's structure was part of the problem, and perhaps we should have seen this years ago. A different form of organisation might have looked for a manager with marketing and publicity skills, who would direct the efforts of a highly trained group of Leader Couples. The Leader Couples would run the events, and the management team would run the organisation and handle its marketing. But our Constitution and ethos didn't really permit that. Our whole engine of development has been the First Stage Event, and future leadership is identified from couples attending First Stage events. If the supply of couples to first stage events dries up, then we have no source of future leadership. And our existing Leadership has nowhere to focus and develop their skills. They get disillusioned and move on. This is where we are now, and in fact have been for several years.
Speaking for ourselves, Judith and I feel we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to AME, for what we have learnt and what we have gained in our own marriage. We must particularly thank Ron and Rosemary, and the Ponters, the Firths and the Gauntletts for the help and encouragement they have given us as we developed our own leadership skills. It is something we shall always remember and value. I am sure that all of us here would say that, for us personally, AME has succeeded in its mission. And a number of us are continuing to use the skills we have learnt to support marriages in a number of ways, for example Marriage Preparation, help for individual couples, work in schools and so on. However without a steady programme of First Stages, AME itself has no future, because we are failing to provide for our succession. And now if there is no-one prepared and qualified to take over, we must close.
So what now?
When he heard of our problems, one of our External Assessors, Prof Richard Whitfield, approached us and suggested that he might be able to carry our work forward in a new way and with a somewhat different organisation. At present this new organisation is in an embryonic stage, but it will probably operate under the name "One to One: Couple Communication". It will be a set up as a charitable trust with supporters, rather than being a membership organisation like AME. Because the organisational structure will be different, the simplest procedure will be to close AME and then open the new trust. Further information will be available in due course.
David Robinson (Chair)
Who we were
AME was a charity dedicated to helping all couples to improve and build on their loving relationships. We did this at our Focus on Couples events, where we tried to help couples improve communication, share feelings and to handle conflicts constructively. Events were usually residential weekends where we escaped from all our normal daily hassles and were able to give time just to each other. Numbers were small: usually not more than six couples. Events were led by a trained Leader Couple, who shared in all the activities and who continued to work on their own relationship at the same time. Our Leader Couples were not paid, and we kept the cost of our events as low as possible.