GREAT MEETING WITH CONCRETE PROGRESS MADE!

Hello All,

I just wanted to briefly tell you of some of the fantastic progress made in this last week!

Fifty students and early career people came to our Network meeting at the IUHPE World Conference. We had four stimulating presentations and a truly inspiring discussion. We will be posting the actual minutes of the meeting in the near future but in the meantime-- I wanted to share some very exciting news!

One of the results of the meeting was that we all decided that students and the early career community should have formalised representation within the IUHPE structure. To this end, a group of seven of us from all areas of the world met directly after the larger meeting to draft two resolutions for the IUHPE General Assembly. The first resolution asked that students and early career people be represented on the Board of Trustees. The second asked that we be represented at the regional level. We suggested that these changes be considered by the board and that they report back in one year. The idea is that we would have these formal positions in time for the next World Conference in Hong Kong in 2010.

At the General Assembly on Thursday night, both resolutions passed!! Woo Hoo!

It is so thrilling to have met so many bright, energetic and committed people at the conference. We are a very strong group of young professionals. We have so much to contribute to the field of health promotion and truly to the world itself. I am excited about us organising ourselves, not only for the purposes of our professional and academic development but for the purposes of the work of health promotion. If we can cultivate our talent and global reach by joining together-- we can have an incredible impact.

Thanks for your interest in working together. For those of you able to attend the conference, I so appreciated your eagerness and engagement. For those of you who did not attend, please tell me your ideas for how you would like the network to function and what you need from it.

I wish you all the very best,
Hope