Extraordinary General Meeting - 1 April 2022

Notice of Extraordinary General Meeting 

SDEA hereby notifies and invites all members to the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) that has been convened following the resignation of current President Rosemary McGowan due to personal and health reasons. Rosie has written a letter to address all members (appended below) and will step down from her role on 28 February.

At the EGM, members will vote for a new President to serve in the SDEA Committee 2021-2023. We strongly encourage and appreciate your attendance to let your voice be heard. RSVP to receive the Zoom meeting ID and password. 

SDEA would like to thank Rosie for her leadership and dedication, and wishes the best for her. The SDEA Committee and Secretariat has been working diligently to ensure a smooth transition, continuing its effective administration and operations. The ongoing and upcoming programming - ETLA courses, Connections 2022, and Let's Connect: Making Space - will continue as planned.

Election of President (2022-2023)

Terms of Reference

For information on the roles and responsibilities of the President and other Office Bearers, please refer here. 

For the terms of reference of the Committees, please download here. 

Nomination Process 

1. Download the nomination form here.
2. Complete the nomination form with all required signatories. 
3. Return the completed nomination form via email to membership@sdea.org.sg before the EGM. 

Please refer to the FAQ below for nomination details and other commonly asked questions. 

For further enquiries or clarification, please contact membership@sdea.org.sg 

Frequently Asked Questions

Do check our FAQs and other details regarding the EGM and nominations here.

Letter from Rosie

I hope this email finds you all as well as can be in these times, uncertainty is never an easy thing to sit through and we’ve been surrounded by it for so long.  

I hope this email doesn’t add to it! 

I have decided to step down as President of SDEA at the end of February 2022.  

This has been an incredibly difficult decision to make and one that I wrestled with for a long time. I informed the committee and the secretariat of my decision in January but I wanted to wait until we knew for sure what the next steps were before telling you.  

When I informed the committee, I was asked why I had run in the first place if I was stepping down now. As some of you know, running for President in 2019 was something I did to save an organisation that I love tremendously – SDEA has given me a community, a space to learn, to lead and I have grown immensely with the association. I have been so lucky to have mentors within it, to mentor younger, inspiring practitioners, and to have a space to keep sharing my belief that drama/theatre education is life-changing. At the end of my last term, my plan was to not run again for President as I knew I needed to look after myself a bit more health-wise, but I was so proud to have put together an amazing secretariat and I was so excited by the young, new members running for comm, that I decided to stay on and run for President again thinking I could do it. 

I over-estimated my health and my own capabilities and ran for President thinking I would be ok.  

I was wrong. 

So what happens now? Well, when the President of SDEA is incapacitated, the Vice President steps up and deputises for them, and that is what will happen from the 1st of March. Aishwariyah Shanmuganathan (Asha) has decided not to step up fully into the role of the President and as such will instead be interim President until the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM). 

At the EGM, we will be calling for a member to step into the role of President of SDEA for the rest of the term (2021-2023). As President, you will run and oversee SDEA, the Committee and the Secretariat (both of which are fab), you will be supported by your VP who having done the role by then, will be able to give you some good support, and I will be here for any questions and to help you settle in.  

Please feel free to reach out to me at rosie.mcgowan@sdea.org.sg if you have any questions about the role or anything else.  

Thank you for all your support in the last (almost) three years, I’m stepping down as President but I’ll still be around and I’ll hopefully see you at the next Let’s Connect in March.  

All my love,  
Rosie