The Dystonia Europe (DE) board and members met on Zoom for the 32nd General Assembly on Saturday 10th May 2025.
It was lovely to see so many join us for the general assembly. I much prefer face to face meetings, as I am sure you do too, but it is so much more cost effective to have a meeting online. This saves a lot of money and time for Dystonia Europe and our member organisations. We will meet face to face next year, that interaction with each other is also important and valuable to us all.
Edwige opened the meeting and thanked everyone for attending, she also explained how the zoom meeting would work so we were all clear about how to vote, raise one’s hand, ask questions etc.
Members who attended came from 10 different countries and the DE board members are from 6 different countries. We must have saved thousands of Euros not to mention reducing our carbon footprint!
Everyone received the annual report by email and Monika took us through the highlights of the year which included our meeting in 2024 in Timisoara and the Physio Hub developed by Johanna Blom which is a great asset to physiotherapists who treat dystonia patients.
She was followed by Sissel who presented the annual financial report.
It is clear that everyone involved with DE spends funds wisely and saves money where they can. We can always do with more funds of course and Monika works really hard all year round securing funding from our main sponsors.
We then proposed and elected 3 new board members which is great news! They each bring different skills to the board and we are all looking forward to working with them.
Next on the agenda was projects for 2025, it will be another busy year finishing with a face to face meeting in Spring 2026 in the lovely town of Lund, Sweden, my favourite meeting venue!
Jukka then presented the budget for 2025 which was agreed by all those present, another year of funding for all our projects to help all dystonia patients.
All in all it was a good meeting well attended by our friends and members and the meeting was run with minimal costs. Next year there will be a higher cost for the face to face meeting but I hope you all agree that it is worthwhile.
Our next meeting for members will be our online Dystonia Day on 30th October 2025 but there are also webinars planned for September.
Hope to ‘see’ you all at our Dystonia Day and looking forward to meeting you all again in 2026.
Gill Ainsley, Dystonia Europe, Secretary
