From the President

Welcome to this November 2016 issue of Winds & Waves, the online magazine of ICA International, on the theme “Looking back and forward”. As editorial team member Rosemary Cairns writes on page 2, Winds & Waves is taking this opportunity to look back at past issues and articles as it looks forward to a new life and look from next year on the blogging platform: Medium. This is also a timely opportunity for me and ICA International to be “looking back and forward”, as I and others complete our 4-year terms as members of the ICAI Board and new members are elected.

Seventeen representatives of 11 member ICAs of our global network participated in two online General Assembly meetings on October 20. Sixteen of 24 current statutory member ICAs voted in the online GA poll over the following ten days. We are grateful to all who participated. As a result of the GA we are pleased to congratulate Archana Deshmukh of ICA India and Gerd Luders of ICA Chile, who have been unanimously elected to serve from January (2017-20), and Seva Gandhi of ICA USA who has been re-elected to serve another two years (2017-18). Lisseth Lorenzo of ICA Guatemala has accepted the Board's invitation to succeed me as President. Gerd has been invited to succeed Lisseth as Vice President Americas and Archana to succeed Staci Kentish (ICA Canada) as Secretary.

In pursuing our mission of “Advancing human development worldwide”, ICAI has been through some developments of its own in recent years. In 2006 we relocated from Belgium to Canada and expanded our Secretariat team and its role. In 2010 we closed our office and Secretariat and embarked on a new and largely virtual “peer-to-peer” approach. Since 2012, our membership has experienced a resurgence in numbers, with many long-standing members returning and no less than 9 new Associate members welcomed by the General Assembly - including at the October GA Focus Homini Poland. The membership has experienced a surge in peer-to-peer activity as well, with face-to-face regional gatherings becoming an annual fixture in all 5 regions and new global task forces taking on roles in global conferencing, co-ordination and collaboration on ICA's “Technology of Participation” (ToP) facilitation methodology and exploring collaboration and partnership with the International Association of Facilitators, as well as global communications and publications including this magazine and our monthly bulletin the Global Buzz. It has been a privilege serving as President these past four years, and I look forward to taking a new relationship to ICAI from next year and to continuing to contribute to our mission in other ways. I am excited and grateful to be able to leave such a strong and capable Board with strong and capable new leadership.

In this issue you will find a diverse collection of new stories and stories from the archive, illustrating how ICAs and colleagues of our global network are helping to “advance human development worldwide”, often in peer-to-peer collaboration with each other. This issue includes stories from Australia, Canada, Chile, Congo (DRC), India, Taiwan, Ukraine, UK & Africa and USA. It includes stories on recovering indigenous language and fostering creative action on climate change; on profound personal reflection and on imaginal education; on addressing exclusion of people with disabilities and on building capacity for emergency medical care; on comprehensive human development in village communities and on transformative facilitation through ToP; on cross-cultural mentoring and on applying systems and complexity theory.

Thank you to all who have contributed to this new issue of Winds & Waves. Enjoy this issue, and please share it and encourage others to do so.

Martin Gilbraith (president@ica-international.org), a certified professional facilitator, is president of the Institute of Cultural Affairs International