New Year Heralds Federation

The Federation of IAP2 commenced on January 1st 2011. Thank you to all the work done locally in countries around the world to build the governance infrastructure to create national and transnational Affiliates. It has been a wonderful year of member engagement at all levels across the association.

When the Federation meets for the first time in February 2011 those sitting around the table will be from: Australasia, USA, France, UK & Ireland, Southern Africa and Canada. There are four groups working to become Affiliates in 2011 and they are in Portugal, Italy, Indonesia and Western Africa. There is also interest in The Netherlands, Poland and Yemen.

The new year commences with an Innovation Summit in Australia to review and re-design the training framework for the Certificate in Public Participation and leaders in the field will be advising IAP2 in this work. Invited to the Summit are distinguished educators, researchers, practitioners and trainers from Australasia, Europe and North America. Amongst the Summiteers will be Lars Kluver from the Danish Board of Technology and 2010 winner of IAP2's Jim Creighton Award; US advocates and networkers in the field of public participation Sandy Hierbarcher (NCCD) and Matt Leighinger (DDC) and internationally recognized for her leading research in random selection and deliberative democracy Prof Lyn Carson from Australia.

There will be regular updates and an opportunity for participation in the Summit via an online blog and input will be most welcome and contact IAP2 HQ to find out how ot link into the event.

Happy New Year to all members of IAP2.