Dear HERS-SA alumnae, members and friends,

It’s nearly the end of another academic year and hopefully you have a bit of quiet time at the office to reflect on the past year and prepare for the next!

This will be the last newsletter of the year, as the activities at the HERS-SA office are slowing down. Our office closes on the 17th of December and will reopen on the 12th of January. Our annual strategy-planning workshop takes place on the 9th of December – this is the final meeting of the year where we brainstorm and plan for 2010. 

We have had a very interesting year and you can find more information about our activities in 2009 on our website www.hers-sa.org.za under the Achievements page. However, I would like to highlight some of the happenings:

At our Annual General Meeting in June we said goodbye to the Chair of our Board, Dr Lesley Shackleton, and officially welcomed Nasima Badsha as the new Chair.  

A number of HERS-SA workshops have been offered at different universities as part of the TOPAS programme, and it is largely due to the efforts of Board Member Ingrid Fourie, who maintains contact with the different training and development managers at universities. If you identify a training need at your university, do remember to visit our website to see what is on offer under the TOPAS programme.

The 7th HERS-SA ACADEMY was held from 13- 19 September at the Breakwater Lodge. Eighty delegates from South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Botswana and Lesotho attended the weeklong event. The 2009 ACADEMY report is available on our website and is testament to the success of this particular event.

HERS-SA (in the person of Dr Sarah Riordan) and South Africa recently made its presence felt at the 6th European Conference on Gender Equity in HE in Stockholm, Sweden. During the final plenary session Sarah offered our South African experience of the Declaration drafted in 2008 after the “Institutional Cultures and Higher Education Leadership” Conference that was held in Cape Town. Read more on our Achievements page about how the South African Declaration provided a platform for the Stockholm conference delegates to draft a similar Declaration for the European Commission.

No less exciting is the news that HERS-SA now has its own blog! If you want to air your views, connect with alumnae or just see what is going on in the world of women in higher education, do visit our website and click on the Links & Blog page. Alternatively, you can go straight to the blog on http://hers-sa/blogdrive.com  We look forward to meeting you in cyberspace!

The end of the year is also the time to say goodbye to a number of people: Management Board Member Shahieda Hendricks resigned in October, and we extend our best wishes to her in her new position at the University of the Western Cape. Sarah and myself have decided to withdraw from our Management Board positions from the end of this year, but as with Lesley, we will stay on as Members of the Board until the 2010 AGM.  We will keep you posted on all the exciting changes at HERS-SA in our next newsletter.

That brings me to the end of this newsletter. Please keep in touch with HERS-SA via our website or blog and let us know about your career moves or any changes in your contact details.
We would like to wish all of you a wonderful festive season with family and friends and we look forward to be your network of choice in 2010.

Warm regards,
Desiree
On behalf of all at HERS-SA