When one belongs to a group, it’s important to know the purpose of the group, what it stands for and what its goals are. This becomes even more true when one gives money to that group. With that in mind, the purpose of this blog post is to clarify the purpose of the Mo Duk Pai Association and what it is doing.
The association is comprised of a board of elected black belts. The board meets several times every year to plan events and discuss goals. In addition, once a year, the association holds a special “all black belt” meeting in which new board members are nominated and elected. These newly elected board members serve for one year.
The association has three main purposes:
- To provide events to help students on their path to black belt
- To help black belts open schools
- To purchase land for the purpose of creating a “martial arts center” and a place for holding annual camp
Purpose #1 – Furthering Student’s on the Path to Black Belt – This year the association organized camp, all system workouts and seminars. These are all activities that are intended to offer learning opportunities to the students – to help them along the path to black belt.
Purpose #2 – Helping Black Belts Open Schools – The monies that are collected for annual dues and the monies earned from camp, seminars and other events are from time to time disbursed in order to help black belts who are interested in opening their own schools. One recent example of this is the board gave Sifu Wally money to help advertise his Kung Fu Outreach business, in 2007. This allowed him to eventually open his own school in 2009. He subsequently passed Kung Fu Outreach on to Sean Kelly in 2011, to aid him in starting out in his own teaching career. More schools means more students which means an expanded system.
Purpose #3 – Purchasing Land – A long term goal of the association is to purchase land for a martial arts retreat center and where annual camp can be held. The idea is to reduce the overhead costs of camp, thus allowing for more monies to be put into further expanding the system.
To sum it up in a sentence, the purpose of the Association is to support students, help create black belts and grow the system.
Click here for a printable dues form.
