First and foremost, I want to thank PPSEAWA-Indonesia and their president, Nani Soedarsono, and the Conference chair, Pratiwi Sudarmono, for hosting and organizing such a successful 24th PPSEAWA International Conference. We all experienced the friendship, harmony and joy of once again getting together and exchanging ideas as well as learning from each other in order to promote women’s issues.
I also want to thank our past International President, Viopapa Annandale, and the outgoing Council for a job well done.
I greatly appreciate the support that I received from the PPSEAWA sisters, and particularly from my home USA chapter. It is overwhelming to follow in the footsteps of Jane Addams and the women that followed her. It is a great privilege to be chosen as the 20th International President of PPSEAWA and I humbly thank all of you.
Now we are embarking on our agenda for the next three years with new goals on which our members expressed a need to focus. The first step should be to try to get younger members to be active participants in PPSEAWA. I would urge our individual International chapters to do serious recruiting of new members and to encourage these young women to become active members of PPSEAWA and to come to the next International Conference.
Second, we have several dormant non-dues paying International Chapters. At this point, it is important to revive and rebuild these existing Chapters and not look to start new ones. Let us concentrate on what we already have and grow from within, rather than spread ourselves thin.
Last but not least, within the next years I will try to personally visit as many PPSEAWA International Chapters as I am able to do in order to meet members who are not able to come to the Conferences as well as to see old time friends.