General Assembly participants discussing the strategic plan

APWLD's highest decision making body, the Regional Council (ReC), held its annual meeting on February 3- 4, 2007, in Chiangmai, Thailand, and was attended by 15 members from 12 countries. APWLD was pleased to welcome new members to the Regional Council: Vernie Yocogan-Diano from Philippines, Convenor of APWLD Women and Environment (WEN) Task Force; Titiek Kartika Hendrastiti from Indonesia, Women's Participation in Political Processes Task Force member, and Cynthia Ca Abdon-Tellez from Hong Kong, Labour and Migration Task Force member.

It was also an opportunity for members of the network, who make up the ReC to share information through country updates.

The ReC were given an overview of programme activities and the state of APWLD in 2006, the financial crisis, measures being taken to address the underlying causes and to prevent the situation from happening in future, which included the implementation of the external evaluation recommendations. The question period that followed contributed to the lively discussions over the two days which focused on programme and organisational matters to improve and further develop organisational policies and practices and to inform and support national, regional and international advocacy and reach a consensus on important issues.

Given the financial crisis the ReC identified the need to address institutional matters to ensure sustainability. A number of possible limitations on the capacity of the secretariat and task forces to perform were identified, which included the staffing situation. The ReC made a number of recommendations and decisions for both the Programme and Management Committee (P&M) and the Secretariat of APLWD to implement changes and set future direction, the current priorities are: Governance: complete Operations Policy/Guidelines Manual; Human Resources: review capacity of secretariat, to look at the capacity impact of work hours on secretariat staff to achieve a more reasonable work life balance; programme planning/budgeting - commence strategic planning for 2009-2011 - fundraising - for the next pogramme cycle 2009-2011.

A number of discussion papers were prepared, with contributions from members to establish a framework for further discussion and provoke questions to guide the dialogues was tabled:

• Feminist Leadership and Management Dialogues
• Women's Human Rights Framework Paper
• UN Reforms
• Follow up to the Tsunami Project
• Expansion of APWLD membership

The work is ongoing and currently being reviewed and we will keep you updated.

We regret to announce that Elisa Tita Lubi submitted her resignation to the P & M, the political crisis in the Philippines restricted her freedom of movement and she has been unable to attend the meetings. We welcome Eleanor Conda from the Philippines, Convenor for the Women's Human Rights Working Group, to the P & M Committee and Azra Talat Sayeed, for another year, as a sub regional representative from Pakistan.

We farewelled Judy Pasimio, the Programme Officer for WEN last year and welcome Almah Tararia, as the new WEN Programme Officer. Almah is a lawyer from Papua.

With the support of our network members we look forward to the challenges that we have ahead of us.