About being a trustee – Kirsi’s story

From the invitations to the convention which have just been sent out, you will see that there are two trustee positions up for election in September of this year. Having good candidates to carry on our work is extremely important, as is keeping a dynamic team and that means bringing in fresh people. Becoming a trustee may seem daunting to some, so we have decided to tell our own ‘trustee stories’ to help you gain insight into the role of a trustee. Beginning with one of our newest trustees, Kirsi Myllys, our treasurer.

“My first contact with the LUPUS EUROPE Trustees took place in Larnaca at the Convention held in Cyprus in 2012. There and then I made a promise to organise the 2014 convention in Helsinki. I knew this was a big promise to make, but it all happened and everything went well. The following year I had several skype calls with the Trustees and then in the summer of 2013, they invited me to a Trustees’ meeting in Amsterdam. That was a dream come true – truly.

In Amsterdam I felt I was one of them, one of the group. The team was so efficient, there was a lot to go through, all concerning lupus, and a couple of times I had to leave the room, when the Trustees discussed and decided on something that wasn’t meant to be heard by a non board member. In the end, I thought it seemed so great what LUPUS EUROPE is doing that I wanted to be more involved and do my bit. I have no illusions about it, I know it means hard work, but it’s all in the name of lupus.

Now that I’m one of the Trustees I get to do what I enjoy most, which is organising events and accounting (I finished my retraining in accounting in 2014). There is so much I need to learn, but one step at a time and in a while I will even be able to memorise the names of all the different organisations that Lupus Europe is involved with without any effort and notes. The best thing from my point of view is, however, that I know there is always someone there to help me out, if I feel I cannot do something. This feeling is new in my experience of voluntary work 😀

Kirsi”