President’s Report 2016

by Glasser Canada | General, news

President’s Report to the Annual General Meeting of Glasser Canada Members
February 20, 2016

Introduction
Fellow Board Members, Ladies and Gentlemen this will be my last report and because I would like to, review some of what we have done as a corporation and thank some people my report will be slightly longer than usual.

Stepping Stones
I joined this Board when Canada was still considered a region of what was then the William Glasser Institute.

Around 2005 Basic training in particular and training in general began to slow down across North America.

By 2010 we had been asked to leave the William Glasser Institute as a region and establish ourselves as a separate organization.

In 2010 the executive met to discuss the transition process.  This was the first face to face meeting of the executive other than meeting at conferences.  At this time, we discussed the vision, mission and purpose of Institut William Glasser Institute Canada.  Changed our By-Laws and started the process of creating the necessary administrative processes that would allow us to continue as a corporation.

One of the consequences of this meeting was that the president also became, de facto, the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation.  This in my view is not a good thing but it was necessary for financial reasons.  This load was lightened considerably when Jean Suffield agreed to take on the administration of Basic and Advanced Training and the paper work and vigilance involved in making payment of fees to what was then the Glasser Institute now William Glasser International.

As President
During my six years as president then, the following were some, by no means all, of the accomplishments of Glasser Canada:

• We established a corporate not for profit structure that was reflected in:
  The establishment of Standing Committees: Finance, Communication, Professional Development, Program Development, Research, and of course the executive.
• Since 2010 we have gone through 4 iterations of our website. I have worked with 4 different webmasters during this time.
• We also established an Instructional Website and we established a Conference website for Toronto in 2014
• Nancy Grant and I have worked during these years to publish Newsletters and introduce the E-Bulletins as well as keeping the French Website updated.
• During my first 3 years as president it was necessary to establish ourselves as a functioning corporation which we did successfully.
• In the second 3 years as president we began a process of making our administration more flexible with respect to supervisors and Instructors.
• Now of course some of the administration with respect to training is being handled by William Glasser International and it remains for us to ensure that regular communication is established. In other words, it is no longer necessary for us to provide forms. The processes for submission seems to be easier for basic and advanced training. However, communication is still an issue with respect to candidates and payments especially since we are still responsible for reporting of successful candidates as well as handle the finances although this too may change in the future.
• I have attended regularly scheduled liaison meetings by WGI for what are now called Member Organization. More recently David Baillargeon one of our Board Members has also attended in order to give our French speaking members adequate voice.

It is clear that our role as a not for profit corporation is changing. The uncertainty of processes between WG International and Member Organization are slowly being worked out but remain a difficulty to date.

The need for a change precipitated a historic meeting of the Board. We met face to face for the first time in Regina in March of this year.

Our primary task will be to provide resources, encouragement, support and ideas for our members and possibly as well as for other organizations around the world.

This may be our primary source of income in the future.  Certainly it will augment the income we now receive from training.  I Jean Suffield the new president and all of the Board members well in their deliberations this year.  It may be the most important year yet in our changing organization.

Thank you
I could say much more but I think it gives you a flavor of where we have been and where we hope to go.

In closing I would like to thank a number of people.

First I would like to express my thanks to the Board Members for their work on the Board and for the time they have dedicated to it. I very much appreciated it.

I would like to thank Ellen Gelinas our previous president for her help and support in those first years; and for her work as the Canadian Representative to WGI and as Co-Chair of the International Conference held in Toronto in 2014.  Ellen’s buoyant spirit has often sustained me.

I would also like to thank Maureen McIntosh for her support generally and specifically for her help with the pre-conference training in Toronto at the International Conference. That help was greatly appreciated.

I would like to thank Jean Suffield for everything. I can’t begin to enumerate the help and support I have received from her. I particularly want to thank her as our Canadian Rep to WGI. I do not think the WGI Board will ever be the same and that I strongly believe is a good thing. I also thank her for her willingness to take on the presidency of Glasser Canada. It will be an exciting and challenging job.

Finally, I want to thank Nancy Grant for the endless hours we have spent together on the newsletter, the e-bulletin and the website. I think she not only did this as a friend but also because she believes passionately in the ideas of William Glasser and with Mona is one of our most productive faculty members.

As I said at the beginning. I have very much appreciated working with all of you and look forward to getting back to do some serious training in Greater Vancouver.

Thank you.