President of EEsrASSW, Prof. Darja Zavišek, has written to the president of EASSW, Prof. Teresa Berttoti, to consider the issue of a joint membership.
You can read the letter here:
Prof. Darja Zaviršek, president
EEsrASSW
To the president of the EASSW, Prof. Teresa Bertotti
Dear Teresa!
During the Board meeting in August 2020, you, the President of the EASSW, initiated a discussion on the relations between regional associations in different continents. In Europe, we have the EASSW and the Nordic Region of the Schools of Social Work (both with paid membership) and the East European sub-regional association (no membership fee).
In the period of economic bottlenecks in universities, many educators are faced with the growing difficulty of paying to various social work associations, in Europe in particular the EASSW and IASSW.
For this reason, I have put this question online and asked the members of the EEsrASSW for their opinion. The consultation process was very lively and many people responded. It turned out that this issue is a concern for many of them. Educators from 11 East European countries sent in their responses, in total there were 15 responses.
The main summary points were the following:
-payments to international organisations for more than one membership are a burden on the budgets of schools and universities;
-some educators are confused about which association they belong to and have paid membership and therefore do not benefit from what they could get from the social work association;
-payment is often arbitrary, some years the University/school pays for the EASSW and another year for the IASSW and people are not properly informed.
All responses strongly expressed the view that joint membership would promote identification with the Association, increase potential members’ activities and increase the use of online documents and resources.
For these reasons, I would like to ask you on behalf of the EEsrASSW to raise this issue at the next EASSW and IASSW board meetings, in order to possibly work towards a common membership.
Many thanks and best wishes,
Darja Zaviršek
December 1st , 2020