Friday, 21 May - Day Four of Conference

The International Council was asked to attend a breakfast meeting at 7am in the Conference Room. Some of us dutifully turned up and waited, but by 7.10am it was obvious the meeting wasn’t going to happen so we went to the breakfast tent. Some Council executive were there, and we were asked to have breakfast first. The meeting commenced at 7.30am and focused on the election of officers and country bids to host the 2013 conference. Unfortunately the use of the data projector hadn’t been organised causing further delays.

Requests were made for scrutineers for the elections and my name was put forward by Valerie Hogan as was Anna Morri, a young lawyer from Pakistan. We will assist Sharmina from Samoa. A little later when a request was made for a team of collators of any recommendations proposed by members to go to the new Council, Anna and my names were proposed again along with Taine Woodward and Elinore Schlesinger from UNICEF. Short term activities that neither of us had a problem with.

The plenary session “Our Young Women, Our Future” began late but involved young women leaders whose organisation and presentation skills demonstrated a positive future for PPSEAWA if these women are given some lead in its management. The delay in getting this session started meant that we were unable to hold one of the important sessions planned for the morning – presentations by the Presidential candidates (who turned out to be Theresa Hintzke and Mary Cabrera).

After lunch, the programme could have been offered as optional. The afternoon was spent with a demonstration of makeup (with Miss Bali 2009 as the model – it was later suggested that they might have been better served to attempt to do a makeover of one of the delegates). There was also a presentation from a local producer of natural beauty products who later revealed that she was born in 1928 – if asked to guess her age, I probably have said early 60s, if that. She said she had used these natural products and potions since an early age, and they truly appeared to have worked, although we did note that the Asian women in general had beautiful skin anyway.

The afternoon tea session was taken up with the country bids (from Taiwan, Canada, USA and Fiji) and the vote gave Fiji the 2013 conference. We then had a presentation by the Executive to prepare a Strategic Plan for PPSEAWA. They had identified that many members did not understand PPSEAWA’s organizational structure and proceeded to explain the many positions of the Council and their roles . (This was timely as members were going to be asked to vote on filling these positions. Names were up by no bios had been posted so we could find out about whether they were capable of the posts to which they were being proposed).

After going through the SWOT analysis that the Council Exec had compiled, we were then broken up into groups to add to the lists. Our assigned group was the weaknesses and threats. The group felt that the analysis had already been done and that perhaps the group could look at recommendations to address these weaknesses. Despite the general feeling of the group that this would be a more productive use of the session, this proposal was rejected by the convenor because another group had been tasked to write up some recommendations. We were later to find that their recommendations mainly focused on the structure of the organisation, rather than on the issues raised by the SWOT analysis. Our group’s time would have been put to better use to have devised ways to reduce the impact of any weaknesses and the risk of any threats to our organisation. The report of the group’s activities to the plenary session did not accurately reflect the views expressed by the discussion group.

Communication had been identified as a prioritized weakness of PPSEAWA and the development of the website was seen as a priority by the majority. However it was interesting to note that a small number of members rejected the use of the website because they did not have access to the internet. Having just indicated a need to get more in touch with our young women, it was explained that the use of the internet and online social networks were perhaps ways in which to keep in better touch with the young people we want to build and lead the future of PPSEAWA. However at the same time there is a strong need for policies that relate to the use of these systems within our organisation. Kate Morioka explained that the website did not meet the needs of members because it lacked a vision for the site and its content that was not relevant to the objectives of the organisation. Again policies and a website committee are probably going to be necessary to get make the website more useful to members and the organisation itself.

The day’s program finished about 6pm, and Alexis and I used these last hours of her time in Bali, to walk to the nearest internet café to touch base with home. Not having been on the internet since last Sunday, I found 191 messages in my mailbox – among them I was offered a job, asked to attend an IT meeting in Tonga and notified of the passing away of my father’s brother during the week. I needed to respond to these urgently and it highlighted the importance of conference venues having internet facilities to cater for member’s home based responsibilities while they are at such a conference, especially when it has been at their own expense.