January 2006

Message to Global Alliance members

Passing the baton
I would like to express my gratitude to all of you for your support to me over the past two years as Chairman of the Global Alliance. As I pass the baton to Sej Motau from South Africa, I can tell you that Sej and I will continue to work closely together to pursue our common goals. I will continue to serve as a member of the GA executive Board as Past Chairman for the next two years. As you can well imagine the members of the executive board have been my second family for the past several years and it is with tremendous gratitude that I have had the privilege of serving with this fantastic group of individuals who have supported me and our cause during my term of office. Recently I have sent to you a copy of our annual accomplishments document. As you will note our membership now consists of 62 different PR organisations - mostly national bodies from around the world - a notable accomplishment considering that we were officially incorporated only four years ago.

Sharing the best work we have done
The GA, now in its fourth year of formal activities, has undertaken many projects in support of our strategic plan. We had accomplished much but have so much more to do. It is indeed a daunting task to aspire to unite the profession and explore world standards but I believe we have the resolve to do it and with your help and continued support, we will achieve even greater things on behalf of the profession. I have always believed that the GA is a place where we can put in common the best work that we have done in different parts of the world so that at a minimum we don’t have to re-invent the wheel on key initiatives that we all need to do for the 160,000 members that together we represent. That is one key advantage of having the Alliance.

Spread the word about the GA
I would urge to keep spreading the word about the work of the GA. Particularly if your have an upcoming change in your own leadership structure. Briefing incoming presidents of your respective organisations would be pleasure. This could be done by telephone, email or indeed personal visits provided you inform of secretariat (susanr@prisa.co.za) of any change and request such a briefing. This particular point is a simple one but quite often we find our contact list to be outdated and hence information about key developments does not get passed along to our member organisations. I would remind you that according to our governance structure, two delegates from each member organisation are automatically considered members of our governing council which meets once a year. These delegates are described in our rules as the president of the member organisation and, if applicable, the permanent staff member. The rules also provide for a substitute should you wish to choose someone else from your organisation to be the contact name for GA purposes.

In closing I would like to thank you for your personal support to the GA vision and mission. I can only hope that you will want to stay connected to our work as we continue our evolution. I certainly plan to do continue my involvement in any way I can help. I can be reached at the following emails: jean.valin@servicecanada.gc.ca or at: jvalin@videotron.ca. It has been an honour to serve as Chairman of the Global Alliance for the past two years.

Sincerely
JEAN VALIN APR Fellow CPRS
Past Chair, Global Alliance