Dear Koi Club President or member contact,
We hope this announcement finds you and your club members healthy, happy, and off to a great ponding season. The purpose of this email is to inform koi clubs throughout the United States of a change in the affiliation of our koi judging group. Effective June 15, 2012, the new name of our group will be the American Koi Judges Association (AKJA). We will no longer be affiliated with any other koi organization. Our new independent position means we can assist the entire koi hobby without being placed in a difficult position of defending any other organization’s political actions.
For the American koi hobby and hobbyist we doubt you will notice much of a difference. We will continue to offer our services for judging koi shows, giving presentations at club meetings, and volunteering to support the local koi hobby in any way we can.
We will be pretty much the same group of koi judges (with a few exceptions) that were affiliated with a national koi club organization previously. In recent years our talented judges group has provided judges for 30+ koi shows annually plus countless other events where we served as speakers, show staff, and volunteers to many other koi related events.
We are retaining all the same proven rigorous requirements for applicants and certified koi judges except for requiring them to be affiliated with any other specific group. American Koi Judges Association (AKJA) Certified Judges have retained their previous level of training, certification, and seniority that was earned with another organization. By joining and creating an independent self-governed organization of koi judges we know that we will be even better able to provide excellent support and assistance to any and all local koi clubs regardless of their national affiliation. We are developing a new website which can be accessed at www.americankoijudges.org and is free and available to anyone.
Koi judges and candidate judges with our organization are proven excellent teachers and experienced koi keepers. We plan to post a lot of free information and online articles about koi appreciation and other koi related topics on our new website as we move forward. We encourage your club to send an email for any koi related events you are planning to be posted on our koi event calendar by our webmaster who is Dale Gingerich at: DaleRG@CharterTN.net
If you would prefer to have another person in your club receive this and any other related information about our group please reply by sending that persons name, club affiliation, and email address to Bryan Bateman at : bryzkoi@aol.com. If you have any questions about the American Koi Judges Association please do not hesitate to contact any of our Judging Committee members. We look forward to seeing you at a koi event sometime soon,
Respectfully,
Charles Phelps, AKJA Chairman – kykoi@insightbb.com
Bryan Bateman, AKJA Committee – bryzkoi@aol.com
Ray Jordan, AKJA Committee – rjordan8@swbell.net
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