There are some chaps on there that I have huge respect for
One of the reasons I dropped out many years ago was because I got a very annoying letter from the chair of the time, who rejected my proposal for lowering the fees for Eastern European Instructors. I had trained well over 30 instructors in the region (some of the event fees even came directly out of my own pocket) and a few years later I found out that only a handful had renewed their memberships because they simply couldn’t afford it.
When I suggested lowering the price I was told that I had to think of the Koreans who paid their membership fees with pride
Korea FFS!! Now I know he wasn’t talking about North Korea and Kim Jong Un and as far as I was concerned any chair of a programme that considers itself to be International should know that South Korea is a developed and expensive country. By rank it has the 12th highest GDP in the world. I realise that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is evenly shared but you certainly can’t compare Korea to Hungary, Serbia or Ukraine!!! In fact the letter was so “interesting” that I printed it out, framed it and hung it on my wall
Anyway it looks like they have a far better team together nowadays. Hopefully they’ll understand that when the average income is less than 300USD/month (an “excellent” income was about 400 euros/month in Hungary at the time - my g/f was a Hungarian doctor and that was her salary! In the other two mentioned a typical income was around 200-250Euros/month) that sending 100USD+ to be a member of an Instructors’ Association is unaffordable for many!
They should track all these instructors down and offer them membership for 10 or 20 Euros/year, the first year being free. What a shame to have all those guys train to be instructors and then to lose them. “Have to think of the Koreans paying their fees with pride” - I still can’t get over that.
Anyway my wife is training to be a CCI. I think she’ll make a great instructor and she can give lessons while I go fishing
Cheers, Paul
