This Monday evening the Members Council of the KWBN (the Royal Dutch Walking Association) convened to share several new developments. The new KWBN general manager, Paul Sanders, was presented and announced his focus for 2017. The KWBN will focus on closer ties with it’s member organisations (walking clubs) and several services for those walking clubs.
Also, the KWBN will no longer pursue a merger with Wandelnet (the Dutch organisation of long distance hiking trails). The Members Council agreed to stop merger negotiations, although cooperation with Wandelnet will continue. Also, the KWBN will contact local and regional autorities to explore possibilities for cooperations in the area of short distance walks.
The KWBN also launched a new version of it’s site Wandel.nl today. For now, it will focus on it’s current members and walking clubs, although in the future it will start to include recreational walkers once more.
For now Paul Sanders is the interim general manager, but he would like to become the general manager permanently. The KWBN committee is also a temporary committee: they will ask the Members Council on 8 May to allow them to stay on until the end of this year, because “their work is nog yet done”.
Finally, the members asked about the subcommittee Long Distance Walking: this was disbanded last year. The new general manager announced that a new subcommittee has already been formed and that further announcements will follow shortly.