Introduction

REVISED STRATEGY IN 2010-2011 FOR THE FIVA TRADE AND SKILLS INITIATIVE

1. BACKGROUND

During 2006/2007 FIVA decided that Trade and Skills should be included in its policy work and form part of its new Directorate. This decision was based on the belief that such issues would, over time, become more critical to the survival of our historic vehicle movement worldwide. At the September 2007 General Assembly meeting in Copenhagen I was elected as the new Director for Trade and Skills to oversee this new work for FIVA. And more recently, at our 2010 General Assembly in Ljubljana,
I was fortunate enough to be re-elected to carry on with this work.

However, my initial all-embracing Strategy introduced in 2009 turned out to be too optimistic and needed to be revised during 2010. At the 2010 General Assembly in Ljubljana I introduced a new, less ambitious, Strategy for a limited audience (5 ANFs) based on a simple web-based Questionnaire for Clubs and 1 – 1 consultations with selected professionals. A Pilot project, involving 5 ANFs was started on 1st. January 2011 and this will continue until early 3rd Qtr. 2011. And, as well as the new information provided on the Work in Progress page, at our General Assembly in Washington in November 2011 I will provide further feedback on the lessons learnt from the Pilot project and
outline the way ahead.

FIVA wishes to progress this work further to increase our knowledge and understanding of National problems and successes in the Trade and Skills arenas. Initially we want to encourage the identification of endangered skills and to what extent they are endangered, Further work will then be required to establish the best ways of preserving these skills for future generations of historic vehicle enthusiast. In addition FIVA wishes to understand better any specialisms that ANF members need and that National traders and professionals need to provide to meet our restoration requirements. Future work, for political and socio-economic purposes, will need to focus on the contributions each ANF's trade professionals and historic vehicle movements make to National prosperities and employment.

2. CURRENT STRATEGY FOR 2011 AND THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

The 5 ANFs in the Pilot project each have a single Project Manager to oversee the implementation of the work. The web-site Questionnaires were launched on 1st January 2011 and will be guillotined circa July 2011. Some early lessons have been learnt already and these are outlined on the Trade and Skills Work in Progress page.

The knowledge gained and the next Phase of the project will be outlined during our General Assembly
in Washington in the light of this experience. However, as can be seen from early lessons learnt, I believe it will be essential for all ANFs who want to be involved to find ways to access directly individual members of their Clubs via electronic means to generate a significant number of responses to the web-based Questionnaire. Hence I would ask all ANFs to start now to each identify a Trade
and Skills "supremo" who will be responsible for the work within their Nation when the next Phase of this work is launched and to give some thought as to how they might enable wide access to the web-based Questionnaire.

Tony Davies
FIVA Director for Trade and Skills