Season Greeting from our SG Wouter Lox

2020-12-18

Let’s all raise the glass of fruit juice to a healthy and fruitful 2021

We are glad to put a closure to this hectic and challenging year in which COVID has overturned all social cohesion and human connections we all wish for. The implementation of digital tools became a daily routine, and we have never met as much as through these digital platforms. Yet everybody wishes the COVID times will end and we can just all experience again the normal contacts in a real meeting room, the normal little gatherings, the living we are used to. Even with the arrival of the vaccine, what we called normal life will never be reinstalled.

The fear of contamination leading to a pandemic will limit also in the future the meeting possibilities, and if we meet, the modalities of the meeting. This reality affects also our daily association life. The big events like the Juice Summit might need a rethinking in format and programme to respond to maybe continuing meeting restrictions either imposed by governments, societal guidelines, or company governance rules.

The office place, once a venue of vibrant team gatherings has become a desolated platform leading to the reflection of a required downsizing of the required office space. The normal gatherings with institutional officials, the possibility of a small talk aside of a conference or meeting will still for a certain time not be possible, requiring from the team of AIJN different skills to become experts in digital communication and advocacy delivering the service to the members and maintaining the added value of membership.

In the light of all these glooming developments and challenges, we had to endeavour in 2020 and still have to face in 2021, the flexibility, agility, and intensified team spirit the AIJN team has shown, provides a good feeling that we will be able to stand these challenges and might still provide some light in the darkness. Therefore I can only be thankful to the members to have been standing with us in these times, and gratitude to all team members of AIJN to stand with me and to show outstanding performance.

Let’s all raise the glass of fruit juice to a healthy and fruitful 2021

Wouter