ESCIF 2018

ESCIF Congress 2018

We are delighted to announce that the ESCIF Congress 2018 will take place in Prague, a beautiful capital city of the Czech Republic, 8 - 10 August 2018. This may be an ideal opportunity to spend some extra summer days in the so called 'City of a Hundred Spires'.
 
The thirteenth ESCIF Congress is organized together with Czech paraplegic association - CZEPA and the theme will be Peer support.

The venue is four star Clarion Congress Hotel Prague possessing excellent transport accessibility as the hotel is in the same building as the underground.

You can expect the invitation email in your inbox soon as well as more information on the official ESCIF Congress website.
 

author: Martin Vorel

Elections to the Executive

In the 2018 Congress in Prague, three seats are up for election to the Executive including the President. Jane Horsewell, who has been the President for many years, declared already when she was elected in 2014 that it would be the last term she serves as the President. This means that we will elect a new President in 2018.

Two more members are up for the election; Nuutti Hiltunen from Finland who has been in the board for four years and Gunilla Åhrén from Sweden who has been in the board for eight years. Gunilla is currently the Vice-President.

We want to encourage all the member organisations to discuss any candidates that you would like to put forward. Remember that the ESCIF statues states: 

“Only members of a national spinal cord injury consumer organisation that holds membership of ESCIF are eligible for election to the Executive. The candidature of the person in question must have the approval of the governing board of the national organisation of which they are a member.”

We will call for nominations again at a later stage. However, you can send in nominations already now. Please, send your nominations and presentations of the candidates to Urs Styger, secretary@escif.org. The presentations of your candidates (and those who are standing for re-election) will be sent out together with the notification of the Assembly that will be sent to all the delegates at least six weeks in advance of the Assembly.

Ambassador program

ESCIF will soon launch the Ambassador program. Those of you who visited the ESCIF congress 2017 in Piran, Slovenia, received some information about the Ambassador program. The program is a result from an idea that emerged from the strategy meeting held at the Manfred Sauer Stiftung in Lobbach, Germany, in October 2016. The Executive had invited some people to a two-day meeting to develop a future strategy for the ESCIF. One of the things suggested was an Ambassador program. Since then the Executive has continued to draw up plans for all the topics that came up during the strategy meeting, including the Ambassador program.

The purpose of this program is to improve the communication within the ESCIF. This means that the Executive will contact all of the member organisations in the beginning of 2018. We want to hear about your strategy, risk/trends seen and many more things of your interest. We also want to hear about your thoughts, ideas and need of the ESCIF.

So, expect someone from the ESCIF to contact you in the beginning of the year. We are looking forward to the possibility of a closer contact with all the member organisations.

Ageing Well Project

A part of the Ageing Well Project working group met this August in Manfred-Sauer-Stiftung to plan the final stages of their effort.

It is now clear that the outcome of the project will be a new part of the ESCIF official website focusing directly on ageing with spinal cord injury and related issues. The website should go online in the beginning months of the 2018.
 

Future ESCIF Congresses

ESCIF is dependant of its members to organise the ESCIF Congresses in cooperation with the Executive. We would therefore urge you to consider arranging a future ESCIF Congress. It will give you the chance to put your country and your organisation on display for the rest of the Europe. It also gives you the chance to influence what the congress should focus upon apart from the fact that you will contribute to the ESCIF work.

If you want to get more information about what it means to organise an ESCIF Congress, please contact Urs Styger, secretary@escif.org.

Sweden has declared an interest to arrange the ESCIF Congress in 2019 and are currently examining the possibility to do so. However, nothing is decided, so other countries can declare an interest for 2019 or years to come.