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Report from 2019 NATCON below

Delegates from four Asian countries together with Naturist Association Thailand agreed on Saturday 4 May 2019 to establish ASIANAT – a new regional structure and a fund to support the growth of naturism in each country in Asia. The seminar was one of the cornerstones events of this year’s NATCON which was attended by 125 naturists from 23 different countries.

The seminar started with a report from Ms. Chew Tok Wha from the Malaysian Naturist Association (MYNA) about the current situation in Malaysia. She was followed by a report from Mr. Muthu Kumar about the fast growing naturist numbers in India. Mr. Muthu was standing in for Mr. Satish Menon, the official INF Correspondent for India, who was unable to attend. Next up was Mr. Michael Siangco representing naturism in The Philippines, followed by Mr. Cheng Chee Hoewe speaking about the difficulties about practicing naturism in Singapore because of the dense population and many high rise apartment buildings.

The discussion regarding establishing an ASIANAT structure was introduced by Mr. Gregers Moller, the founder of Naturist Association Thailand in 2007. The growth of NAT has been achieved because of a unique structure of membership: At the top, there are currently 92 Premium Members, in the middle 352 Paid Members and at the bottom 3400 Free members. The Free member category are people who have all completed the sign-up procedure but still cannot join any of the activities and the discussions on the closed social media platform on the website until they upgrade to Paid or Premium member.

Since 2007, the total membership of NAT – including the Free members – has developed to 3800 naturists from 83 different countries. However, 75 percent of them are living in Asia and only 35 percent are living in Thailand.

“For naturism to develop its full potential in Asia, it is necessary that we establish local entities in each country and support them in creating local events. It will look weird if NAT creates member events in Vietnam or India – but as a super-structure ASIANAT can support events arranged by local groups in these places,” Gregers Moller said

ASIANAT will not grant exclusivity to a single organisation within national boundaries. Any group should be able to work directly with ASIANAT and request support independently of any national organisation, that may also have been established.

As a practical detail, anyone signing up for membership will from now on be asked to give permission for NAT to share their user id with local groups of naturists near them, enabling communication without breaching trust.

Gregers Moller proposed changing the current two level price structure for membership of Naturist Association Thailand to be a new uniform membership rate of 1200 Thai Baht for all members. From this amount, NAT would allocate 300 Thai baht to the ASIANAT . The same amount per member should be paid in from other naturist groups or associations in the region. The accumulated ASIANAT funds should be managed by elected representatives from these groups and association. The support could for instance be in the form of a loan to a group to make a down payment for renting a location for an event ahead of receipt of participation fees. It could also be a direct subsidy of an event in any country in Asia.

In the discussion following the introduction of ASIANAT, it was questioned whether the naturist resorts in Thailand should pay a higher fee to be members. They stand to benefit from the growth of NAT and ASIANAT and a higher membership fee could therefore be justified. On the other hands, the resorts do currently sign up guests as new NAT members which is already more valuable support of NAT than an increased annual fee.

Larry Johnson from Canada suggested that NAT withdrew from INF and spent the INF membership fee on ASIANAT instead. His point was, that if INF was doing its job, we would not need ASIANAT.

Claudia Kellersch from California, USA argued that instead of leaving INF it would be better to work on changing INF from the inside. INF was indeed very Euro centric but there was a new Latin American group which was a parallel to ASIANAT and they had decided to remain within INF. She suggested that ASIANAT should encourage the establishment of national federations in each ASIANAT country and send delegates to INF to influence the usefulness of the INF. In her opinion, INF could learn a lot about how to support their members from AANR, the American equivalent to the INF-FNI.

Other proposals encouraged NAT to create a presentation of what naturism is for local naturist groups to use when contacting governments and other authorities to get more acceptance of naturist activities.

The acceptance of naturism in Thailand was seen as a result of NAT consistently showing a responsible and non-confrontational attitude to nudity and by playing by the rules in terms of registering our business and pay taxes and insurance and holding tourism license.

A proposal to move the annual NATCON to Malaysia in 2020 was rejected by Gregers Moller. He argued that one thing is for locals to practice naturism cautiously at certain resorts, but if 120 foreigners were to travel to Malaysia to hold a naturist conference it would likely be a very different matter.

Agreement
The objectives of ASIANAT were read out and received the agreement of all country representatives present.

The full ASIANAT declaration follows here:

ASIANAT DECLARATION

Adopted on 4 May 2019 during 8th NATCON in Thailand

Preface :

Naturism has been steadily rising in Asia. In recent years, naturism and its appeal to Asian people has become visible through the rise and expansion of Naturist Association Thailand. It is now evident that Asia is home to a large population of naturists from all countries in the region and all walks of life within each country and territory. Based on the INF-FNI definition of naturism as adopted in 1974, we believe in non-sexual nude recreation as an ethical and healthy, family inclusive, pleasant lifestyle leading naturists to achieve greater body freedom, improved self confidence and a range of other physical, mental and spiritual benefits.

Given this increasing popularity of naturism as a lifestyle in Asia, 125 members of Naturist Association Thailand assembled at the 8th NATCON in Thailand on 3 – 5 May 2019 resolve to establish a regional body called ASIANAT and facilitate establishing member organizations of ASIANAT to be present in every country in the Asia Pacific region. There are social and regulatory issues around naturism in most Asia Pacific countries and one of the objectives of establishing ASIANAT is to contribute to more education and understanding towards naturism as well as maintaining a uniform adherence to the above mentioned definition of naturism.

Objectives of ASIANAT :

The main objectives of ASIANAT is to:

• Act as an umbrella organization for promoting naturism throughout Asia Pacific .
• Help the individual federations in membership building activities .
• Work closely with member countries of ASIANAT and provide support to facilitate growth of naturism in every member country.
• Act as a bridge with other international Naturist Federations and look for co-operation to promote Asia Pacific as a preferred geographical choice for naturism.
• Work with the press and media to promote naturism as a healthy lifestyle and to dispel wrong notions of naturism.
• Help the individual federations to work with resorts to develop them for naturist activities .
• Organize regional activities to promote naturism in the region.
• Hold regular meetings between member nations to review progress and chart growth plans .
• Develop and manage a budget for ASIANAT.

Objectives of ASIANAT Member Federations :

• Establish an entity in their respective country.
• Be the spokesperson and contact person for all naturism related queries
• Promote naturism through different forms. This could be through meetup groups, press and social media
• Take the lead in promoting naturism in the country
• Organize meetups regularly
• Work with other member federations and ASIANAT to hold joint meetups
• Prepare and manage a budget for the federation
• Represent the member Federation at ASIANAT
• Report quarterly into ASIANAT

Member Declaration:

I,________________________________________, from ___________________________________  do hereby agree to take on the responsibility of being the ASIANAT member representative for my country or region and agree to abide by the points listed above.

Date :

Location :