President of EATA 1989 until 1991

The most important theme for me in EATA was the spreading and the development of TA in Eastern European countries.

In July 1989 we had the first EATA conference in an Eastern European country in Zagreb (Yugoslavia at this time).

At the ITAA/EATA joint conference in Brussels, July 1990, a roundtable was conducted by Jean- Pierre Quazza, EATA Vice President, on “Expanding TA. Global Action: Eastern Europe”. The first highlight in this event was the presence of colleagues from the USSR who were able to express their own needs and wishes in front of a large assembly of members from the “whole (TA) world”.

image025The message was very clear: there is an enormous amount of interest in TA in those countries and it is difficult to study by books only: there is an ur- gent need for training and supervision.

Since usual (western) payments of training were impossible due to economic reasons in these countries several trainers offered training just for the costs of accommodation and food and EATA started to support the travel costs for such trainings.

Since a large number of PTSTAs and TSTAs had already initiated contacts and actually trained people these programs became successful.

There were at that time already groups at work in Leningrad, Poznan, Lublin, Budapest and Prague, just to name a few.

The main impression left by this meeting was one of extraordinary hope and pride about the usefulness and appeal of TA and about the capacity that we have as TA organizations, to mobilize ourselves at the forefront of what was then the European Adventure of the 90’s.