July 2010 - EATA President Sabine Klingenberg.

 

 

Presidents Report - Bilbao conference - July 2011

(This report as a pdf file: Presidents report Bilbo)

EATA in the 3º Millennium: Times are a changing… EATA it is about people, structure and processes

EATA is growing – this is a sign that EATA is useful is serving its purpose and the work of membership associations, delegates, officers and active people in various projects helps to stay connected in the European TA communities.

The internal perspective: Different associations are in very different stages of development: there is a huge variety in economic situations, the culture, and the needs. One side effect is complexity which is richness and makes processes and tasks more difficult.

An observation during the years is: the work for and in EATA Council becomes more and more attractive – more people seem to be interested to become a delegate. And this means we often have new delegates and EATA has to accelerate transfers of knowledge and information.

Since most of the work is done by volunteers we are faced with the fact that we do have more projects in mind than money and human resources available. We need to focus ourselves to what is possible and what is linked to the future needs of our membership association and EATA as an international organisation itself.

And we also have to account the strategic perspective - and my impression is we do have more questions than answers today:

  • Do we want EATA as a political association?
  • How can EATA be a TA Association and have a political voice?
  • Do we want EATA to intervene in specific cases of discrimination?
  • Which role should EATA have in the area of social politics?
  • Do we want EATA as a professional representation?
  • Which kind of support should EATA as a whole provide for different interest groups?

Whatever the answers may be – EATA is an important body and to fulfil our tasks we do need to be seen as an organisation which is managed and organised on a with highly professional standards.

The core purpose of any association is to develop and maintain control of the legitimate practice of a profession and to safeguard the interests of its members and the public (Webster, 2008). 

If we go on with this idea EATA has…

·        to guarantee the continuity of service

·        to develop and maintain accreditation

·        to have a code of ethics and practice

·        to develop and maintain recognition of profession (e.g. research, publications, and conferences). 

·        to guarantee the standards of services

EATA’s functions need to be described with job profiles and competence requirements for main tasks

…to guarantee “objective” autonomous decision making. Council members have different roles – with different interests and needs: in Council they represent their association or associations, and in the committees they are responsible for projects and tasks of all member associations.

Risks of conflicts are pre-programmed, I do know that we have many competencies amongst our members and there are so many willing to serve in special roles, specific projects in addition to those who are elected as delegates. It is like a rich secret treasure - and we do want to value and use that even more in the future. The goals are to provide continuous professional service, to improve the quality of services, to use the competencies in the “field”, create transparent and safe processes, create a space for projects, initiative and enthusiasm, and create a contract based environment for delegates as well as for people in charge.

For this we look for ways to contract with non-delegates for special tasks. Theses tasks for instance require special expertise or abilities. This kind of contract we already use e.g. for the treasurer, Examining Supervisor, TEW coordinator.

As a decision from Council in Bilbao 2011, I will create a task force to work on a proposal for this new structure, develop job descriptions and core competencies.

I will keep informed the Executive, the delegates and the Presidents of affiliated associations.

The voting will probably take place next year in Bucharest

A second challenge for the future is the membership structure. EATA was and is created as an association of associations. Last year we presented the results of an inquiry concerning the EATA Affiliated Associations and created a Status Report linked to the question as to whether they offer training or not.

The outcome has been rather confusing:

  • Associations are in different stages of development. In the beginning it might be useful to stimulate training through the association but as soon as possible it should be handed over to trainers and institutes. If the association organises training there will be competition with other trainers offering training.

  •  This will probably be an ongoing task, especially since in some countries TA organisations with different identities are in competition for members in the country and sometimes have conflicts with each other but not with EATA, which they are an important part of. It cannot be the task of EATA to resolve such issues through finding absolutely perfect definitions of structures. Also, EATA cannot “control the reality” in and of member organisations, this would be impossible. What EATA can and should do – and we will work continuously on ways to do that – is to help resolve conflicts and find co-operative solutions. This is one of the strengths of TA and of our organisations.

 I would like to express many thanks for their work and commitment to officers leaving the Council:

  • Marina Banic – Serbia - now elected as EAP delegate
  • Jenny Bridge, UK and General Secretary
  • Carla de Nitto, Italy and Chair of PTSC (will stay for another half a year as co-opted Chair of PTSC)
  • Jacqueline Dossenbach-Schuler, Swiss-German
  • Nicoleta Gheorghe, Romania and Vice-president
  • Amaia Mauriz-Etxabe Spain
  • Sedin Habibovic - Bosnia

 And a very warm welcome to

  • Marco Mazzetti – Italy, Chair of COC and representing PTSC and COC in Executive
  • Oana Panescu – Romania – new General Secretary
  • Pascale Theobald – France – Vice President

 My Presidency is linked to the idea EATA being a touchable, reachable and supportive association which is available for our members.

 Please get and stay in contact.

 Warm regards

Sabine Klingenberg

EATA President

Robert C. Thames, Douglas W. Webster – 2008; Chasing change: building organizational capacity in a turbulent environment, P. 255

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Message from the new President of EATA - July 2010

As new President of EATA I want to express many thanks to you all, for your vote and your trust in me.

I took over from Resi Tosi, Past President, and I feel great respect for her outstanding contributions to our community. I would like to thank Resi Tosi with love and respect on behalf of EATA and personally for her work as President. Her warmth and cordiality, her inspiring and respectful way of  dialogue, clear and multi-level thinking prepared the way to solutions which were acceptable for almost all countries and associations. And she supports and challenges me to grow into my new role.

In the last years many new projects and services have been developed by EATA. Some examples are:

  • Launching the research journal IJTAR which was a main project of Resi Tosi – which is now a regular service

  • Organisation of EATA Conferences, World Conferences and International trainers meetings

  • Organisation of Research Conferences and Workshops

  • Establishing new ways of evaluation like TPW/TEW and Training Evaluation Workshop to become a CTA trainer

  • Certification and Examination processes

  • Development of the new Code of Ethics

  • Organisation of Summer Schools, Training programs in Eastern European countries

  • Translation during conferences and of books

  • Developing EATA Brochure

EATA became more modern and rich and we want to continue and develop our services further.

Along this way we face several challenges:

  • EATA is growing! We have to face the fact that an organisation with more than 7550 members andmore than 34 Associations in 27 countries has to implement more and more professional structures to carry out the organisation.

  • It seems to me of significant importance to develop existing processes, to make them more «safe» and transparent and to create a different structure in some areas of our work.

    •

  • Our members are expecting prompt and reliable services. The workload for our officers is growing to an extent that we have to ask whether volunteers can manage it in the future. How can we balance it?

  • During the last years we have invested a great part of our savings for several projects and services. At the same time we have to consider the way how we can make sure EATA’s budget is balanced to make sure EATA stays in a «healthy» state as an organisation - and provide service of high quality to our members.

  • The diversity in the different countries by law, by culture is challenging our ability to prompt a respectful and bonding.

Letter from the President

EATA Newsletter N°99, OCT. 2010

ITAA is in a difficult position, decreasing the amount of members, the President stepped down unexpectedly and BOT finds itself in a phase of orientation and searching for a new vision. EATA has a strong interest in cooperation and we will take our responsibility to invite the dialogue with other TA associations during the 36th World Conference in Bilbao, Spain 7th – 9th of July 2011 which will be hosted by APPHAT and is a conjoint event between APPHAT, WPATA, ITAA and EATA.

EATA has a strong and competent membership with different needs and demands and a huge cultural diversity which keeps the community alive and vivid. I would like to support integration, growth and diversity knowing it will be a huge task - I will need the power and the competencies of you all. Cooperation, enrichment and learning from each other can open the space for creativity and solutions.

I want to improve the cooperation between Associations, looking for mentoring systems, support on different levels, and cooperation to learn from each other.

I am standing for commitment and at the same time I would like to balance the work you do in the Council, in committees and in your National Associations in creating processes to avoid excessive demands and exploitation of people being committed to their work for the community.

Work for and in EATA is voluntary work; it should be connected with esteem, recognition and joy. It is a privilege to be President of EATA and part of this Executive Committee and I am curious and excited. And I am looking forward to the future, with respect to the past and the presence trusting in our amazing ability to cooperate and communicate. This gives us a strong basis to deal with a high degree of complexity, with conflicts and difficulties and with inspiring diversity of our multicultural and multilingual organisation.

I invite you to contribute to your Association EATA, to stay in contact with us, to ask questions and to challenge me and the Executive and to be part of this wonderful community.

Sabine Klingenberg, President of EATA

July 2010 - EATA Presidents Report is included in the Minutes from the General Assembly in Prague.

 

 

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