PRESIDENT’S LETTER

Letter from the President

As I sat facing the massed ranks of IPA members when I was elected to the Board in 2008, I couldn’t have guessed what lay ahead. If I had, I might have felt a little more daunted, but the immediate problem was chairing a General Meeting of unruly IPA members with the rulebook at their elbows. I survived that baptism of fire – just – to be released to our post-GM dinner afloat in Hong Kong harbour.

I admit chairing a GM would never become my favourite Presidential task, but with two more under my belt and a Special General Meeting in Karlstad besides, they have given me a strong sense of the passion IPA members have for children’s play and the care you bring for IPA as an association. The GMs are held within the IPA World Conferences, where in Cardiff in 2011 we celebrated the historic 50th anniversary of IPA and in Istanbul in 2014 we saw the birth of Access to Play in Crisis (APC) and the approval of a record number of new IPA Branches.

It has been such a privilege to work the partners in Wales, Turkey and now in Canada on the IPA Triennial World Conferences. Each was and is a remarkable event coloured by the culture and context of the host country and by the special qualities of an IPA conference, unique in the way we share, play and dream together.

While the World Conferences are our high profile and visible events, between times the IPA Board and Council work continuously towards the IPA purpose of protecting, preserving and promoting the child’s right to play as a fundamental human right. Our dearly missed colleague Valerie Fronczek coined this phrase for IPA and was an astonishing and inspiring - though at times exhausting! - Board colleague. Her vision set the path towards the General Comment on article 31 published by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2013. This is a legacy for children’s right to play of which the Board and IPA can be rightly proud.

While we had some wonderful and unusually glamourous occasions - the Golden Ball in Cardiff and the launch of the General Comment in swish lakeside surroundings in Geneva - others were a little less glitzy. Who knew that much of the IPA constitution was drafted in the back of a bus in South Africa? Strategic plans refined while stuck in traffic jams over the Bospherus, the ‘sweetie paper’ concluded in a spare hotel room in Edinburgh?

It has been a huge privilege to be part of all of this. And, it has been fun! As I step down from the Board after nine years, I am enormously grateful for the whole roller coaster ride that we’ve been on together.

I know that IPA has achieved what it has over the last decade or so because Board members have worked quietly and consistently in the background, partners have stepped up, and IPA members all over the world have put in time and effort. All of this has been undertaken purely to support the vision for children’s play that IPA holds and nurtures because we all know it matters. We stand up for children’s right to play - for if not us, who?

My warmest wishes to our incoming President (thank goodness you will take over chairing the GMs!), to the new and continuing Board and the Representatives of our growing body of Branches around the world.