Chairman of ICCCPO
It has been a great pleasure to meet so many of you - who found their way to Montreal to attend the ICCCPO Conference and General Assembly Meeting. Both informative lectures and workshops provided opportunities to representatives from many nations to share ideas and programmes, problems and opportunities. Holding this ICCCPO meeting along with the SIOP Meeting was a very important way of ensuring that the voice of parents continues to be heard by clinicians.
The last Annual General Assembly reflects the rapid growth of ICCCPO: nine organisations were accepted as full members, two organisations as associate members, representing Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, India, Israel, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Russia (2), and the United Kingdom. Currently ICCCPO has 39 members and 6 associate members from 38 nations all around the world.
The Executive Committee underwent some changes. Barbro Eriksson (Sweden), and Johan Sandal (Norway) both retired, Barbro after serving for five years, Johan after two years. Barbro and Johan, it has been a privilege to work with you and we thank you for dedicating so much of your time and energy to the international cause. We are delighted that with the election of David Orren (Israel) as member and Mokhtar El Harras (Morocco) as deputy member the Middle East and Northern Africa are represented on the EC.
At this place I would like to acknowledge the indispensable contribution and support of the national organisations of the members of the former EC to the Confederation. These organisations (USA, Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, Norway) have made considerable donations in kind (time, travelling and housing of EC members), and as a consequence of these and other factors we are able to run the Confederation more and more effectively, to grow in membership, to expand our programmes and services and to develop closer collaboration with SIOP.
The expanded membership presents ICCCPO with new challenges. Although the feelings and emotions of parents of children with cancer are universal, it has become evident that the problems faced by parents in different parts of the world show a vast difference - from the total lack of drugs on one end to the psychosocial needs of survivors on the other. No wonder that there is a broad variety of parent support groups and programmes. The EC has identified several area’s that need special attention: 1) communication systems with member organisations and organisations that have expressed an interest in joining ICCCPO; 2) financial support of organisations with limited resources to join the confederation and attend ICCCPO meetings; 3) financing ICCCPO’s operations and programmes; 4) collaboration with SIOP; 5) more focus on the problems in countries with limited resources.
There is a lot of work to be done and we are very pleased that at the AGA so many of you responded to our call for volunteers. We established a number of working committees - some of them already existed - each of them chaired by a member of the EC: Membership (Mark Chesler), Newsletter (Gerlind Bode), Fundraising (Simon Lala), Website & PR (David Orren), Strategic, Marketing and Business Plan (Christine Wandzura), Organisation and Communication (Marianne Naafs) and Elections (Sadie Cutland).
We need your help in other ways too!
- The EC will meet February 10-12, 2000 in Barcelona. You are kindly invited to put forward items for the agenda.
- Perhaps your organisation would like to host the next mid-year meeting of the EC (Feb/March 2001). It is an excellent opportunity to meet the EC in an informal setting and to learn more the ICCCPO.
- Recently the Dutch Association, that hosts the coming ICCCPO Conference and General Assembly in Amsterdam, October 2000, in a letter has made an appeal to the solidarity of the financially stronger ICCCPO members and asked them to sponsor an attendee for the Amsterdam meeting. We strongly support the initiative of the Dutch group that is in the best spirit of the ICCCPO effort.
- As I mentioned earlier, we need more money, not only to run the organisation and its programmes, but also to financially support groups with limited financial means. Any ideas to find sponsors are welcome.
If you would like to lend a hand, don’t hesitate to contact us!