30 YEARS OF ALZHEIMER EUROPE
Jean Georges looks back on his 24 years as Executive Director of Alzheimer Europe On 1 November 1996, Jean Georges joined Alzheimer Europe as its first Executive Director. In this interview, he looks back at some of the key achievements of the organisation and its plans for the coming years. This year marks 30 years of Alzheimer Europe – what are your reflections on this anniversary? Looking back on the history of Alzheimer Europe, I want to start by paying tribute to the vision of the founders of our European movement: Michael Coote from Ireland, Henk ter Haar from the Netherlands and Franz Baro from Belgium felt that their associations could both learn from other organisations and share their innovative projects and activities with others. They convinced the representatives of 106 associations from six countries (Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain) to meet for the first time on 3 September 1990 and to formally launch Alzheimer Europe. At this meeting, they adopted the following statement “Because we are all satisfied that we will benefit from European co-operation, and together can put more pressure on the
European Council, Commission, Parliament and other national and supranational organisations, we have decided to form a European Jean Georges Alzheimer organisation.” Co-operation and lobbying European institutions remain important priorities of Alzheimer Europe to this day. Fundamentally, some of the key roles and priorities of the organisation remain unchanged. I had the privilege to meet all three of the Alzheimer Europe is, above all, the umbrella founding fathers and I was happy to hear organisation of national Alzheimer’s assohow proud they were of the increasing rec- ciations and their support continues to be ognition and scope of the association which an important role. The membership of the they created. association has of course grown from the 10 founding organisations from 9 countries to Alzheimer Europe’s role has evolved and 39 associations from 35 countries. now looks significantly different to its earlier years – can you tell us more about how Similarly, we continue to raise awareness of and why this change occurred? dementia, represent the interests of people with dementia and their carers and lobby the I am truly proud to have been able to lead European institutions for a greater recogniAlzheimer Europe over the past 24 years and tion of dementia as a public health priority. accompany and, sometimes, instigate the However, the importance given to these primany changes that the organisation has orities has changed considerably. undergone. At the beginning of Alzheimer Europe, the focus was predominantly on supporting national members, helping them setting up websites and providing them with material, such as the Care manual or the Children’s book, which could help them in providing advice to carers and much needed information on Alzheimer’s disease. As the member associations continued to grow themselves and as the awareness of Alzheimer’s disease increased, Alzheimer Europe started to focus more on its policy work and in 2006, we adopted our Paris Declaration with the political priorities of the European dementia movement. This was followed by the development of our European
Henk ter Haar (Netherlands), Michael Coote (Ireland) and Franz Baro (Belgium) together in 1991
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