AOS & COVID-19 - Chairman's Message

Dear Members,

In light of recent government advice, we would like to provide clarification on how the British Omani Society is responding to the COVID-19 outbreak.

From today, most Society events scheduled for March and April are postponed. This includes Violet Astor’s lecture ‘Wild Oman’ on 19 March, Shahina Ghazanfar’s lecture ‘Plant of Oman- A Journey Completed’ on 16 April and Dina Macki’s ‘Omani Supper Club’ on 18 April.

We are exploring the possibility of a livestream of Jeremy Jones’s lecture ‘The Good Neighbour: A Commemorative Lecture on the Life of Sultan Qaboos’ scheduled for 2 April. We will be in touch with further details on this next week. The event at the Army & Navy club will not be taking place. If the livestreaming technical details can be worked out, members will be able to watch the lecture as Jeremy Jones delivers it, in real time; and a recording of the lecture will be placed on YouTube, so that you (and indeed the general public) will be able to watch it in your own time. AOS members will be able to access the YouTube version directly from a link on the AOS web-site.

All new Arabic courses will be postponed indefinitely and a decision will be made on how we proceed with the current Arabic courses in consultation with the students and teachers this week.

The Office will be closed until at least 30 March. However, the Office team are working from home and will be able to receive calls and respond to emails as normal. Please call 0203 141 1760 for the Manager, Nick Smith; or 0203 141 1761 for the Programme Manager, Dina Macki. The best email address is admin@ao-soc.org.

In these unprecedented and difficult times, we will continue to strive for new ways of engaging with you, our valued members. The fortnightly Oman Press Digest will now be published on a weekly basis every Thursday and we will continue to upload Podcasts through our website https://www.ao-soc.org/library. A Podcast with Helen Lackner on ‘Omani-Yemeni relations’ will be uploaded imminently and we will endeavour to line up a number of guest speakers in Oman over the next month.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is anything we can help with. We very much look forward to welcoming you all back to the Society as soon as possible but until then, we hope you and all your families stay in good health.

Best wishes,

Stuart Laing

Chairman, AOS