DevelopmentFEPTO@gmail.com

Chair: Mirjana Jovanovska Stojanovska mstojanovska2002@yahoo.com

The idea to start a Network Committee in FEPTO was initiated in Vienna as one of the seven chairs. The idea was to create a special chair to represent the growing need in FEPTO for more contacts between our members. There was a feeling that FEPTO grew up very much in the last few years and with it was born the need for more networking.
Networking is about creating more meaningful dialogues for our personal and professional developments as FEPTO members. We represent Psychodrama Institutes and training organizations. Behind us are many trainers, teachers, students, trainees and graduates. Creating networking can help FEPTO become a broader psychodrama community and allow more contacts and interactions.

The rationale behind networking is to encourage FEPTO members to have more encounters with one another for the purpose of professional exchange, mutual support and exchange of teachers and students.
In some countries, local psychodramatists do not meet one another. Some Psychodrama Institutes are located in the same city without any contact between them. Networking activities may reduce competition, tension and unnecessary power struggles between institutes and increase the possibility of professional dialogue and cooperation.

As FEPTO members we meet only once a year, usually in a very pact and busy schedule. We hardly have time to spend with one another. The network committee wants to encourage FEPTO members to have more possibilities for exchange of ideas, feelings and new professional developments. We need more intervision time and therefore we suggest to have in each FEPTO meeting time devoted to intervision sessions as part of the annual meeting program. This might give us a chance to learn more closely about the structure, content, concerns and the experience collected by our different training programs and share mutual questions and concerns.

The Network Committee can cooperate with the Newsletter to collect and distribute information regarding international and European psychodrama calendar of events, conferences, professional activities, workshops and new articles and books in our field.
It might be a good idea of FEPTO creating in the future the European Psychodrama Association open to professional individuals and to students who are interested in Psychodrama and Sociodrama. Through the networking process we can find out if this is a real need and start creating the basis for it.

For better networking and communications, we would like to suggest that FEPTO will publish a booklet in printing and/or on the internet of the different psychodrama training programs in Europe including the name, contact address, phone, email address, site, director, trainers and teachers, a short description of the training process etc.

We suggest creating more network groups which can meet once or twice a year. One meeting is connected to the annual FEPTO meeting (during the pre- or post-FEPTO meeting) and the other meeting is sometime in between the annual meetings for one weekend, each time in another country. This kind of group can become a constant source of trust and support and allow members to work psychodramatically on personal and professional issues. The possibility of creating such networking groups can be organised during our next meeting in Gent.

We have already one group like this called The Matrix Group which started in Cluj and met already in Berlin, Athens, Glasgow and Belgrade. In the end of August we had an effective and meaningful meeting in Belgrade with Dr. Zoran Iliic and Vera his wife as wonderful and special hosts. We came up there with the following reasons why to have such a network experience: 1) Fascination by working together. 2) Inspiration and support. 3) Containment of feelings. 4) Learning with emotions. 5) Balanced personal and professional experience. 6) Value of sharing without masks. 7) Accepting the differences. 8) Peace.

Since December 2017 our organisation has a forum, and we invite all of you to participate in this process involves and bring your experience, your ideas, your expertise and above all your creativity and spontaneity.

We are aware that it is not a brief process that needs time, exchanges, interaction and cooperation in order to be successfully completed. Our goal is to get started in Pravetz and then continue our exchanges online, via the internet platform, that was recently launched, thanks to the work of Fred Dorn, chair of Network and Development Committee.

Ongoing work on by laws

The By-Laws are an instrument to make the constitution practicable.

As the constitution is the scaffolding – firm and slim – the By-Laws have to fill it with functioning tools – how work and collaboration have to be organised, which agreements have to be taken, which rules shall be accepted and compliance with them ensured.

It is wise not to fix these regulations in the constitution – since it can only be changed by two-thirds of our members but to put it in the By-Laws, to be changed, actualised or omitted by a simple majority of the GA.

We will continue the discussion on By-Laws in a working group at the next GA to find useful and practical solutions.

Fred Dorn