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Regional report to CATE AGM November 08

By Dave McKissock/ Karen Poy

This past year has been a very busy year with the conference planning and facilitation.   The conference was a tremendous success, due to the grand effort by the committee and the support of all our Southland Colleagues.

The feedback we received was overwhelming.

Financially, it was also a success; due to good accounting applications by Greg Brown and also that the ILT gave us a huge discount in some areas. Also the Stadium was very good to us, as well.

Due to a surplus we decided at the final conference committee meeting and sanctioned at a Regional Meeting that we forward to the Stadium a Cheque of $10,000.   The staff at the stadium was blown away and stated that they had never received any donation of this kind before.

We have finally closed off all conference accounts and are now completing a full report to our major sponsors of the Conference. It has been really important that we close everything off prior to reporting back to our stakeholders.

The rest of this year has been a quiet one for the Southland Region of the Careers and Transition Education Association, due to everyone deserving some time out from the aftermath of the Conference.

The association has grown in numbers since our Conference and from last year's affiliations. In 2007-2008 we had 27 members and fro the 2008 -2009 year we have at present 34 members, with some coming from the tertiary sectors, which is very positive.

Many members attended a Professional Development day hosted by Career Services recently. This day focused on the employment trends and demands Southland is experiencing and what is expected in the near future with the increase of major industry initiatives currently either been planned or are underway.

Dave McKissock and Michelle McCuin have attended the Executive meeting in April and July. The main topics have been, finalizing the Constitution and looking at the School Plus proposal; also Dave presented a discussion document on Officer bearers? changeover at the July Meeting, with Michelle attended in his absence.

Finally we would like to thank everyone for the outstanding year we have just had. It is the biggest year we have had and hopefully for some time.  Both Dave and Karen have decided to move aside this year to allow some other members to opportunity to undertake the role of Coordinators.

Also we need to seek another person to take up the role of Southland representative on the CATE Executive, due to Dave stepping down in preparation to take up a role as an Executive Member with CPANZ in 2008-2009.

We both feel privileged to have coordinated our Association over the past years, and look forward to our continued involvement in the future.