The pandemic brought challenges, and some surprising gifts, for many of us. Cancelling our 2020 conference was definitely one of the challenges. Because we had to cancel just a few weeks before the conference was scheduled to begin, we lost money already spent on the event, as well as the registration fees. These financial losses represent a substantial percentage of the annual income EVAWI needs to operate. We know that many of you are already aware of that.
What you may not know is that our last federal technical assistance (TA) grant ended in May 2021. These TA grants have been supporting the training and technical assistance programs many of you depend on. Unfortunately, the most recent round of 2021 solicitations did not include similar funding opportunities that we could apply for.
Between these two developments, EVAWI is unable to continue providing all our online services free of charge, as we have done for so long. We hope this situation will change, as we emerge from the pandemic and new grant opportunities arise.
For the time being, however, we will be charging registration fees for all our live and archived webinars. That may be bad news for some of you. But the good news is that our 2021 virtual conference was extremely successful, with over 2,000 people registered to attend. Because all the sessions from this virtual conference were recorded, we can now – for the first time ever – allow people who couldn’t register for the entire conference to pay for one or more of the 68 recorded sessions. You can find the complete agenda here. Together, this means we now have a total of 120 webinars available in our archive.
Looking ahead, we are very excited about returning to an in-person conference in San Francisco in 2022, but of course also nervous as we continue to navigate new terrain and constant changes. At this time, we are doing everything we can to continue offering our OnLine Training Institute and Training Bulletins free of charge, and we will reevaluate our sustainability in early 2022 to determine if any additional changes need to be made.
We appreciate your support, as we move forward.
