WELCOME
A letter from
THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL
As dialogue goes to print, Director-General Jane Easton has been in
post for a little over a year. Here, in a special extended editor’s letter,
Jane reflects on her first twelve months with the ESU and discusses
the organisation’s enormous potential for growth and change
as it approaches its all-important centenary year in 2018.
T
he ESU has an excellent
reputation for the quality of
its educational programmes,
competitions and scholarships,
but I am sure that many readers will have
been asked “what is the English-Speaking
Union?” when mentioning the
organisation to friends and family. If you
have ever found yourself struggling to put
into a few words exactly what the ESU is
and what it does, then you’re certainly not
alone. Virtually everyone I’ve spoken to
in the past year has had to think hard
about how to do justice to such an historic
organisation with such a breadth of
charitable work to its name in just a
few short sentences. The Board of
Governors understands the need for
such a concise statement, and they have
set themselves the task of producing
a new, short, clear statement that can
be used to promote the ESU.
There is a real need to build on the
ESU’s already excellent reputation to
make the charity better known, and to
ensure that even more young people can
benefit from what we do. The question of
how we achieve this has been exercising
my mind for ѡ