Our bylaws
MIWA’s bylaws set out what the association is for, how it is run, what membership costs and which projects it can and cannot fund. They are short, and we publish them in full.
What is in them
1. Purpose
Who we are: a network of women in Montevideo and nearby who have lived extensively abroad. Non-religious and non-political. Our primary language of communication is English.
2. Mission
To empower children from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds by supporting projects in health, education and social welfare.
3. Steering Committee
Its purpose, what it decides, and the five roles it is composed of. Terms of one to three years.
4 to 8. The roles
President, Treasurer and Membership, COCO Chair, Membership and Events, and what each one is responsible for. Section 5 also sets the dues: UYU 5,000 a year, collected in September, membership year 1 September to 31 August, pro-rated for members joining part-way through.
9. Committee on Community Outreach
How COCO is composed, what its members do, the criteria a project must meet to be funded, and how the membership votes on projects.
About this edition
This edition renumbered the document and corrected six plain errors. No wording was rewritten, no section moved, and no clause merged or removed. The sections are in the order they have always been in.
The previous edition used four numbering systems at once, two of them Roman numerals: upper case at the top level and lower case three levels down, which is what made the document hard to follow and impossible to cite. Decimal numbering means a clause can be referred to precisely, because “5.2.2” has exactly one meaning.
The corrections were: a membership year that ended on 30 August rather than 31 August, leaving a day unaccounted for; a spelling mistake; three editing notes left in the body text by mistake; and the dues, which were written as “$5000 UY pesos”. A dollar sign in front of a peso amount had already led the same figure to be described elsewhere as “$100 a year”.
The association’s name is also settled here. Both Alliance and Association had been in use in parallel, and the founding history does not resolve it, because it records the 2022 change from MILC to MIWA without writing out what the new initials stand for. The board has decided: Montevideo International Women’s Association.