This was the Esperanto Association of Britain's site from 2005 to 2018. You will find its current site at esperanto.org.uk.

EAB Archive 2001-02-01 New Director David Kelso

EAB Director of Development

(From Orienta Stelo)

In February 2001 EAB announced the appointment of its first-ever Director of Development, David Kelso from Dunblane, Scotland. This appointment has been made to coincide with the forthcoming relocation of the EAB Office and Library from Ipswich to Wedgwood Memorial College in Staffordshire.

David Kelso was, until his "early retirement" last year, HM Chief Inspector for Post-School Education in Scotland. He has been involved with the Esperanto movement since he learned the language as a teenager, some 40 years ago, and was a founder-member of the Young British Esperantists. As a student in the 60s, he founded a lively and highly successful student Esperanto group in Edinburgh and, in 1968, was runner-up in the Public Speaking competition at the world Congress in Madrid. He subsequently played a key role in the 1971 World Young Esperantist Congress in Edinburgh. For some years, he was inactive in the movement because of career, children and the like, but in recent years he has picked up his old enthusiasms and is now actively involved in the Glasgow Esperanto Society, the Edinburgh Group and the Scottish Esperanto Association.

His professional life has spanned personnel management in industry, lecturing in both further and higher education, college management and the civil service. When not working (professionally or for Esperanto), he is fond of hill walking and has enjoyed for some years a very special relationship with Southern Italy - especially Calabria - where he spent a year as a student. He has three children, two now working and one a student of Art & Design.

As Director of Development, David plans to engage with every part of the movement in Britain and mobilise all the latent talent which he knows to be there. When his appointment was confirmed, David's reaction was :

The world has never needed a universal second language more than today. Let's show the world just what Esperanto, now a well-established world language in its own right, can do!

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