IACAPAP Secretary General Column Moving Forward and Embracing Growth

As a new year 2023 gently rolls on, the new IACAPAP Bureau Executive Council has also been gently settling into its assignment of leading the Organisation forward along our common mission which is to advocate for the promotion of the mental health and development of children and adolescents through policy, practice and research, globally. 

Every new year or dispensation gives individuals and organisations the opportunity to resolve to take  steps forward in the right direction and  to embrace growth at the same time. IACAPAP no doubt will benefit from similar resolutions as we commence new leadership and build on all past efforts. 

Forward moving with growth 

As one of our strategies, we hope to build on the efforts commenced by the outgone executives around membership and increased participation of our members. 

If you recall, the previous Bureau, on March 2021, published an article titled “IACAPAP 2020: A New membership model and a step forward for our organisation. (https://iacapap.org/news/iacapap-2020-a-new-membership-model-and-a-step-forward-for-our-organization.html). They described the innovation and expansion of our membership model to accommodate an individual member category. In addition, on December  8th, 2022, IACAPAP launched a new member portal at https://iacapap.wildapricot.org during the IACAPAP General Assembly 2022.  

Some highlighted features of the site were the ability to; update profile, renewal and payment; access member-only resources like recorded webinars and recorded educational learning materials; special interest groups; participate in forum discussions. 

We are still working on further optimizing the efficiency of the member site, enhancing its utility and also resolving challenges experienced by users while we are targeting these plans. We thank all our members so far for their patience, cooperation and commitment as we move forward in this direction. 

To this end, we have started working at granting the members of Full Member organisations improved access to the member site and also enhancing membership benefits to all members according to the various categories. The benefits of the membership categories remain distinct and have been even further clarified. So, our members can benefit from belonging to at least one or more than one membership category if desired! 

In addition, we also hope to foster greater participation from our members via all categories of memberships. In particular, the allied professionals in the IACAPAP will be an important focus to be nurtured and grown by us all. With the increased participation of allied professionals, no doubt our reach and impact as an organisation will be greater globally. We will count on our current members to make recommendations and collaborations with allied professional groups to enhance our growth in this area. This will no doubt provide us with a truly multidisciplinary association and an all together richer experience. The resource deprived parts of our world would also be carefully considered as we structure our plans for the membership, especially around equity of fees, training and travel related considerations. 

Our membership capacity development experience will continue actively via our existing outlets, such as the MOOC, HRRS, DJFC programs and the lunch and learn webinars. In this tenure, we will further seek to enhance capacity development by exploring additional avenues for mentorship for our early career group programs and the development of other international fellowship programs, as you will begin to see in the course of other collaborations, the new Bureau is looking into. 

IACAPAP Bulletin, issue 69