FICE International Annual report 2020
Dear readers of our annual report 2020,
This year all of us, like the entire humane kinds around the world, had to experience a very complicated and unusual way of life because of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning we were all hopeful that this will take a short time and we will be able to come back to our usual and relatively causey way of life. We were so naïve at that time that we scheduled a face-to-face Federal Council meeting on May 2020 in Belgrade and were hopeful we will be able to realise it. Soon enough we understood like all humanity that this pandemic is changing completely our daily life and it will take time until we can meet again face to face and hug each other as we use to do in our friendly meetings under the auspices of FICE.
However, we must recognize that the life under the pandemic was not only an individual challenge but also encompass our professional activities. Residential care, and all out of home care programs were confronted during that time with highly challenging realities. Vulnerable children and youth that are placed in these programs could not go home during that time and director of programs and their staff had to be highly creative in order to supply these children with all their needs during lock down periods when the pandemic was at its pick.
All this is very well described in the annual report of FICE's National sections in all continents. Every country found its original way to cope with these unknown challenges and give high priority to act on the best interest of the child.
This pandemic forced us also to develop new ways of communication among us so that we can go on with our international contacts and activities. We succeeded to develop the FICE LIVE Forum, to organize FICE COVID-19 Café meetings, to publish very informative Newsletters and to continue the executive meetings and activities through online techniques.
Even the working groups of FICE International members, aiming at looking for new and updated routes for leading our organization in the future, didn not stop during the pandemic and made significant progress during 2020. We want to take this opportunity to thank all the moderators and leaders of these activities. Especially we wish to thank our dear technical assistant Katerina, who centralized and coordinated all these activities in a very efficient and competent way.
Let us hope that soon, the pandemic would be over, and we’ll be able to meet again face to face and continue our common efforts for a better future for children and young people wherever they are.
Sincerely yours,
Prof. Emmanuel Grupper and Rolf Widmer,
Co-presidents