Dear EAPA-SA Members and friends

It has been an honour to serve as President of the Association over the past 5 years. I want to thank our past presidents, distinguished board members, and especially you, our members and sponsors, who are the foundation of our Association, for your support. Certainly we would not have been able to reach our goals without our industry partners.

The 20^th EAPA-SA and Pan African Eduweek, held in Port-Elizabeth, was a great success and a milestone in our history. We have seen remarkable growth in conference attendance this year, with 391 delegates and nine international speakers, which is the greatest attendance in the history of our Association. We have managed to significantly grow and expand our stakeholders and sponsorship, and we are indebted for the support received from our partners. Our journey would not have been possible without the active participation and support from so many of our partners. Thank you!

During our term of office we managed to complete and achieve all our targets. To mention but a few:

• We have grown our membership and revenue generation streams.
• To the establishment of all EAPA-SA chapters (geographically located within the metros of each of our provinces in order to reach out to our members and promote continuous professional development) we have added Platinum Chapter in North-West and The Place of Rising Sun in Mpumalanga.
• Our greatest achievement is the compilation of a written record of the historical evolution of EAPA-SA and EAP development – based on the South African perspective and authored by Prof. Lourie Terblanche of the University of Pretoria.
• Today, our Association is recognised as a professional body by the South African Qualification Authority (SAQA) and we have succeeded in implementing the four designations of our profession; continuing to recognize individuals in the EA field who display passion and interest through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) process. The RPL committee has been trained and put in place in order to manage the process going forward.
• The creation of the Sponsorship and Stakeholder Relations portfolio was born out of our mission to build and strengthen our relationship with new and existing stakeholders and to demonstrate the value add.

Lastly, special thanks to our EAPA-SA office staff for making this a very successful year. Mrs. Theresa Vika our Office Manager has proven to be an outstanding representative for our Association, and with the continued support of our Admin Officer, Ms Janine Naidoo,  and our interns, Likwa Ncube and Isabel Morodze, we were able to elevate our standards and build the good reputational image of our office. I would like to wish them well in their career with EAPA-SA.

I salute our Board for the success the Association has achieved and I look forward to the many more achievements that will certainly follow in the coming years. The recognition of EAPA-SA as the Outstanding Branch of the year 2018 by the EAPA international mother body was the greatest highlights of the five year term of our office.

It is very exciting to mention that EAPA-SA has been selected by The Association of Association Executives in Africa to receive two awards in the following categories:  Best Association Conference and the Best Association E-newsletter for the year 2018. The awards will be handed over to EAPA-SA during the Africa Associations Congress scheduled to take place on the 29 – 31 October 2018 in Pretoria, South Africa.  The Board has done extremely well and excellently.

I thank you all – the members of EAPA-SA – for allowing me to serve you as president over the last five years. It has been an honour, a joy, and an experience that I will always cherish. I have met many new, interesting colleagues, made many new friends both locally and globally, and enjoyed it to the fullest. I look forward to seeing you at upcoming EAPA-SA events in the future.

For the immediate future, I will serve as Past-President and look forward to supporting the new leadership team. I give you my best, and wish you all tremendous success in whichever way you define it.

Tinyiko Chabalala

EAPA-SA President

2014 – 2018