This article for SignMatters comes at the end of 2007, so it would be appropriate to reflect on some of what the year has meant to the BDA and for us to look positively ahead to 2008.

People are now fully aware that the BDA is in financial difficulty and I hope that members and supporters of the BDA will all know this by now, and that we are committed to the recovery of the organisation and to be as transparent as possible.  This was evidenced by our public statement and being open to members at Southport Congress.

The Congress in August, as covered in our September and October issues of SignMatters, was, in our view, a relative resounding success on two levels; the main programme around the theme of ‘Rights through Language and Cultural Equality: Our Education' and the crucial EGM with our members.

I have covered the Congress and education agenda in the previous articles, I and the Board argued that the BDA is founded based on the issues of education and the attempts for eradication of sign language and our way of life (Milan 1880 and Royal Commission 1889). The Congress theme and the announcement of the way forward and new direction for the BDA at the EGM (EGM statement) complemented each other perfectly.

In short, it was time for the BDA to come full circle back to politics and campaigning, and to focus more on being the active voice/hands of the Deaf Community, as our new long term goal for the organisation.  This new direction will take time to be realised and, in the meantime, we are still working to manage our finances, and in conjunction with a new position of being more open to ideas of partnerships, as given in our EGM statement.  We have entered a partnership agreement with Sign to transfer BDA's Counselling Service to enable us to prevent the worsening of our finances and to meet our new direction of focusing less on the service provider role and more on representing the Deaf Community.

By the time you read this, our website will have relaunched, and now we have more control and ability to regularly update the website, we are looking to gradually add new features in 2008 and onwards to be able to keep regularly in touch with our members and supporters. There is now a members-only access section, which we hope members will appreciate as they will be able to access all documents relevant to members more easily.

Our goal is to finally realise our ambition of having papers for members available in signing, and thus meeting our aspiration for both BSL and English versions, though this is still our long term goal and will be implemented where and when we can.

Members will have received nomination forms, an invitation for resolution for our AGM on March 15^th 2008 at Bristol, which will be the fifth anniversary of BSL recognition by our Government. We will be holding a seminar on ‘What next?' in relation to the BSL recognition and a social celebration evening organised by SWDA. All of this will be forthcoming to our members.

We look forward to working with new trustee members in 2008, and there will be an election for the role of Chair and Vice Chair next year, for the new three-year term of 2009-2011. I am now much more confident that the new Chair will inherit the BDA in a more positive financial health, thanks to the hard work of the Board and the staff during this year.

To go back to the beginning of this article, certainly the year has been difficult for the BDA and for our members.  The BDA as it will be in April 2008 is a far leaner and different organisation to the one that was previously, with a severely reduced budget. This is necessary to settle our finances, and from then on, the BDA can really start to move forward again.

However, the most crucial thing is simply that, with the support and determined will from our members and supporters things can only get better. The BDA is, as has always been, going to be a unique organisation led by Deaf people for Deaf people.

So, this month's SignMatters is indeed the last in name and, from next month, we will be ringing in the New Year with a return to BDN as the name of this magazine, as popularly requested by our members and from major consultation at Southport Congress.

To end this article, I would like to wish all our readers the merriest of Christmases and the happiest New Year! Let us all be joined in anticipating 2008 is a better one!