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You are invited to respond to the President at: president@ifcw.org Click here to Return to President's Reports Archive INTERNATIONAL FORUM FOR CHILD WELFARE
San Jose, Costa Rica, September 9th, 2003 Dear Colleagues: Today we celebrate in Costa Rica "el Día del Niño" (Children's Day). There are school parties, all kinds of commercial promotions in the newspapers and - in a more positive note - reaffirmation of policies for the benefit of children on the part of the government and of the Congress that, on this very day, is approving stricter jail sentences for child kidnappers. Cape Town is calling! This will be the last reminder that you will receive before WorldForum 2003 takes place in Cape Town, South Africa. Your presence in this annual meeting of IFCW members is important to us and I have no doubt that it will also be beneficial for your own organization. So, if you have not already sent your registration and made the necessary reservations to get there, please do it immediately. I look forward to meet you in Cape Town next month! Visit www.helpkids.org.za for further information. New Members. Due to an oversight on my part, I have not communicated to you in previous letters the fact that new members have been welcomed and accepted by the Executive Committee. I plan to give you this information in the future each time that a new member is accepted. Since the Secretary will be informing about the situation of new members for this year in her report to the General Assembly net month in Cape Town, I will not repeat that information here. But I do want to underline the fact that two new countries (Ecuador and Uganda) have been added to the list of countries represented by our membership. We encourage you to talk to child welfare NGOs with a view to their becoming members and thus sharing with us their experiences. If you need brochures to distribute and explain our organization, just ask for them and I will send you an adequate supply. Sharing Information.Deepalaya (www.deepalaya.org ), a distinguished IFCW member in New Delhi, India, has sent us copies of their newsletter as well as a beautiful booklet on "Educating to Empower the Child Girl". Both publications are quite interesting and give us a view of the problems and challenges that childcare work faces in that part of the world. I am sure this material would be of great interest and value for some of you working in similar circumstances. Books, books.and an example. Last week I was invited to visit a very special type of ship anchored for a month in the Port of Puntarenas, Costa Rica. (Many of you will remember Puntarenas because it was the venue of the 1995 WorldForum) The M.V. Logos II is operated by a British NGO called Educational Books Exhibits and it is an ocean-going bookstore. Most of the books it carries are children's books (in this instance in Spanish) that they sell at very favorable prices. During its stay in Costa Rica the ship was visited by some 85.000 persons. To me, this was just another example of how our own imagination is the only limit we face in designing projects for the benefit of children. Applying the same principle to IFCW we can say that the only limit to increasing the number of members and providing new and useful services for them is putting our collective minds and our wills to the task. Being part of WorldForum 2003 is a good start! Sincerely, Rolando Quirós F. PRESIDENT P.O. Box 393-2010, San José, Costa Rica Telephone (506) 228 6601 - Fax: (506) 228 0945 - e-mail: feilat@racsa.co.cr
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