|  | Foreword | No.59 May 2010 |

President`s Message
Magaret Talbot
During the last months, ICSSPE has made significant progress towards new dimensions of partnership with other international organisations, especially the International Olympic Committee, the International Paralympic Committee, the International Red Cross, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Office of Sport for Development and Peace and UNESCO. We have identified areas of mutual interest and concern, so that we can work together to progress our own strategic priorities, ie healthy living across the life span, professionalization and ethics, and quality physical education, while helping our partners to advance their own priorities.
We have committed to drafting a Position Statement on Physical Education, with the prospect of securing support statements from our international partners. It will be discussed by the International Committee of Sport Pedagogy at its meeting in Havana in July.
The ICSSPE meetings in Havana illustrate another aspect of ICSSPE`s partnerships, this time with some of our national partners, most of them also our members. ICSSPE could not carry out its work, without the hospitality and generosity of those organisations and institutes which host our meetings. Hence, I record my thanks and appreciation to our colleagues in Havana, at the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation, for being willing to host our 2010 meetings. We hope that the presentations by ICSSPE officers and members at the International Forum which they are holding after the ICSSPE meetings will contribute towards its success. We look forward to welcoming our members to Cuba in July.
I also thank the Sport Education Faculty at the University of Alexandria, Egypt, for its generosity in hosting, in October, meetings of the ICSSPE President`s Committee and of a meeting led by the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women, to bring together the main agencies working on developing opportunities for women in and through sport. As with Cuba, the Faculty is hosting an international conference, to which ICSSPE officers and members will contribute. We believe that this model of mutual cooperation is positive and provides benefits for the partner organisations.
These positive advances have been achieved during a period when international travel has been somewhat problematic! It seems that the forces of nature are reminding us that we cannot control them. The Icelandic volcano has meant that organisers of international conferences have battled to manage programme changes and loss of keynote speakers, as the volcanic ash cloud has prevented or delayed arrivals. The international mobility by air travel, which we have taken for granted over the last decades, now is fraught with difficulties, especially across Europe and the Atlantic. My recent attendance at the World Forum on Physical Education in Iowa was preceded by a journey which took 30 hours instead of the scheduled 10; and in April, my welcome at the Congress ´Let the Children Play` in Northern Cyprus was even warmer, since I was the only Northern European speaker to be able to get there, simply because I had spent the previous week in Greece! It is to the credit of conference organisers and international speakers, that so often, the difficulties are overcome, and international discussion and debate continue.
It is my personal conviction that international cooperation is more important, and more functional, than ever before. Despite all we hear about the ´global village` and the power of the internet, many of our members live in countries and societies which are riven by conflict and other sources of physical danger; and many strive to teach, research, coach or administer sport and physical education, in environments which may be unsafe or unhygienic. And many of the young people across the world depend on sport and physical education for learning the values of self respect and mutual respect, fair play and value for diversity. The power of sport has been well expressed by world figures like Nelson Mandela. Our own capacity to pass on these values through physical education and sport science is less widely known. Perhaps it is time for us now to articulate and promote the power of the primary work of ICSSPE and its 300 member organisations, through teaching and coaching, research and advocacy.

Professor Dr Margaret Talbot, PhD OBE FRSA
President ICSSPE

http://www.icsspe.org/