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450 people attended a public awareness seminar on 10 May which we organised with Fibromyalgia SA and the assistance of the Asthma Foundation.

Over 120 people attended a film evening at the Mercury Cinema on 16 May. We showed the powerful I Remember Me, a personal journey exploring the story of ME/CFS in the United States. The evening was an outstanding achievement for a team of dedicated volunteers in the office, especially coming as it did less than a week after the awareness seminar.

Our annual badge day was a smaller affair than the year before but still raised a healthy amount for our treasury and as usual led to a range of people coming to our badge-sellers to discuss the impacts of CFS on themselves or others. I believe that these days are an important form of outreach for the Society.

We developed closer contacts with a range of other disability societies and with the Department of Human Services. I attended a long series of meetings convened by DHS to investigate whether one-stop-shop disabilities helpline could be established. The original goal proved elusive. Nonetheless the Department provided some headphones and computers to support our helpline and information services. Perhaps more importantly, we forged close contacts with several other societies. I will speak more of that later.

We continued to improve our office systems. Good office systems liberate the energies of the Society’s volunteers to do more and to do it without undue burden on their own health and sanity. The committee has been very thankful that the Society’s administrative systems have been in increasingly good order this year.

We went to our first ever Agricultural Field Day. This was the brainchild of office manager Patricia Smith working with Jane Gill of the North Yorke Peninsula Support group. Our well-sited and well-stocked stall attracted thousands of passers-by over the three days of the Field Day and country CFS sufferers who came by told us they were pleased that the Society had had a presence at the event.

The SAYME group had an active year with a 20-30 group meeting on several occasions in addition to the normal run of Rice Cracker and Spring Water Evenings. These themselves developed a new focus with games and other resources provided by a Community Benefit SA grant. The grant also enabled SAYME to hold a camp at Mylor in October which was attended by 11 people and to produce four issues of its magazine in 2002-03. A grant from the Foundation for Young Australians also funded the development of an upgraded and quite snazzy website for SAYME. I think it quite remarkable that the small South Australian society is the only one in Australia to sustain both a magazine and a website for its younger members.