Dear IAPHL Members,
Let me begin by welcoming our newest country chapter: Indonesia. There is currently a small group of committed people who are working to create a great country chapter. I am also happy to announce that we have been able to add the Indonesian language to our auto-translate capabilities. Now Indonesians can select Indonesian as their host language, so the Listserv emails will come in that language. We will be looking at the possibility to add some other languages in the coming months. As a reminder, we currently offer auto-translate in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Indonesian.
We are also happy to announce that we are now able to continue awarding small grants to our country chapters. We have been able to extend the period of time for activities to be completed to April 2022. Several examples of how country chapters have been able to use these grant funds include the following:
- conducting important member meetings,
- holding workshops addressing COVID-19 supply chain issues,
- developing national health supply chain strategies, including highlighting the importance of the supply chain professional,
- promoting innovative supply chain solutions through a contest (I was one of the finalist judges)
- reaching out to young professionals as they begin their supply chain careers,
- and producing interesting webinars discussing local issues that also resonated at the international level.
We were very pleased to be able to provide scholarships to IAPHL ambassadors to the ASCM annual conference. We awarded 20 such awards and we know that 17 of these members attended the virtual conference. I attended as well. I hope the members have appreciated the “reporting out” on the listserv from our ambassadors. We will be announcing soon that we will be offering 30 scholarship/ambassadorships for the GHSC Summit to take place virtually on December 7 to 9.
The secretariat is busy now preparing for our upcoming meetings with the Advisory Group. We will be first reviewing the findings of the USAID funded Assessment and comparing those with the Human Centered Design Assessment whose findings and recommendations have already been presented to the Advisory Group. We will be following this meeting with another one devoted to developing a three-year strategy for IAPHL.
The WhatsApp group for the Humanitarian Logistics Subgroup continues to grow. I hope the members will soon begin to share their learnings and issues with those on the app. Reminder, if you want to join, do not write the Listserv with your phone number; rather use this link.
Finally, we hope to offer two webinars before the end of the year to our members. Stayed tuned for the subjects and the dates and time. As always, we continue to share invites to free webinars that are offered by other organizations and that pertain to our members.
All the best,
Walter Proper, IAPHL Executive Director