THE HARVEST
by Hans TenDam
The Annual Convention is over. What are the results? We hope the participants learned a lot, at least something. Sometimes we get new ideas, sometimes we find out that something is not for us and we continue what we did already with more conviction or more gusto. And we hope that the participants had a good time. After all, we do these things in the holiday season.
For the association itself, for the board and the committees the results are, as usually, more work. The PR-committee is chewing on the discussions about PR, the Research Committee is chewing on the discussions about research.
Our bylaws are nearing completion. The only thing we still have to do is the institutionalization of independent certification for members and schools, as our Articles of Association stipulate. Basically it is about quality assurance, an important, but not so easy subject. You may expect proposals in the course of this year.
Some members left, some members entered. The list of recognized schools is somewhat reshuffled. Some schools left, some schools entered. All that is to be expected in a young association in a young field.
School leaders m
et for a full day and exchanged experiences and views and liked it. In some things we seem to agree, in other things we agreed to disagree. We are not aiming to standardize everything, but from discussions and exchange may come enrichment. We certainly will continue these discussions next Annual Conventions.
We have the first non-European school recognized: Milton Menezes’ VitaContinua from Brazil. From the training programs in Asia some of us are involved in, we expect Asian members in the coming year. The more dispersed we become, the more important the website and intranet, and the more important meeting each other at the Annual Conventions.
Growing is a form of expansion. We need to do that without dilution. So the other pole is quality assurance. We need good training programs, good publications, good research. I can’t see boredom and routine coming our way for the foreseeable future.
I wish all of you out there many happy clients!
Hans TenDam
