YORK BENEVOLENT SOCIETY AGM

The York Benevolent Society (the official name for the District Grand Lodge of South America, Southern Division, representing English Freemasonry in Argentina) held its Annual General Meeting on Tuesday at its gracious York House premises in San Telmo, marking its 72nd anniversary.

The formal part of the AGM consisted of the re-election of its authorities – District Grand Master Ian Thurn as President, Joseph Levy as Vice-President, Ernesto Marcer as Secretary and Brian Partington as Treasurer.

Marcer read out an annual report which featured a deficit last year (in large part due to the special dinner celebrating 300 years of English Freemasonry with former Lord Mayor of London Sir David Wootton as star guest) but since the reserve surplus from previous years was four times as large, nothing really to worry about.

The less formal (and more interesting) part was a presentation of the Society’s charitable activities in video form by Kurt Baum, Chairman of the Charity Committee. This charitable work has three main targets – the sick, the old and the young. The charity recipients for the first two groups are pretty obvious: the British Hospital, BABS and Links House in La Cumbre. The work with children extends to both urban and rural schools – Colegio Buen Consejo in this city (which receives notebooks) and Hogar El Alba for disadvantaged children in Temperley, as well as two rural schools in the Chaco. Sometimes these sectors overlap – thus Robert Watson and Neville Glynn took out two British Hospital nurses (Lorena Noriega and Victoria Romano) to give first aid instruction in the Chaco schools and the two girls enthusiastically told their York House audience all about it.