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Dear SAATA members,
My last semester in office as the President of SAATA has been made special and memorable with the conduct of the first P K Saru Memorial Endowment Lecture.
Dr. Ashlesha Bagadia delivered the lecture "Beyond the Individual: Community building in Mental Health". We, as a community, got an opportunity to meet in person and reestablish contact with friends and colleagues, old and new. The lecture was an occasion to recommit ourselves to the teachings of Eric Berne. Special appreciation to Krishnan, VP-Development, and his team who planned and executed the event with grace and style befitting Saru's legacy.
The lecture highlighted the need for community building at various levels - networking and working together amongst transactional analysts; engaging with the mental health community outside the TA world; and to promote awareness and forge a strong culture of fostering mental health and well-being as responsible citizens.
My heartfelt thanks to Saru's sons and entire family as they instituted the endowment and committed to be supportive of our endeavour in the years to come. We are planning to make these lectures an annual feature to showcase recent developments in mental health and setting the trend for future developments.
We were humbled by the generosity of this community. When we requested funds through Impact Guru to make our conference accessible to deserving delegates, we raised about Rs 75,000/- within few weeks. This is excluding the donations our delegates paid as part of the registration. This has been so moving and encouraging. I thank the donors (both delegates and Impact Guru donors) who generously donated for this cause.
I'm pleased to see the board of trustees, executive committee and the various divisions of SAATA working like a well-oiled machine. We are able to conduct Diploma exams on a continuous schedule. Also, a team is working on redesigning the Advanced Diploma so that it is deemed as a practitioner certification meeting the regional requirements.
We have also decided to split Research and Publications into two separate divisions starting January 2023 as both these functions have expanded and grown over the years and it seemed practical to make them independent of each other.
New year brings with it some exciting events for SAATA.
I'm looking forward to the upcoming MLL in January 2023 with the theme Professional Identity. You will receive details to register soon. This will be an in-person event to be held in Bengaluru, after three years!
Aruna Gopakumar, TSTA takes over as President in the AGM on 7th January 2023. There will be few other new office bearers who will take charge too, keep an eye for those announcements to be made soon.
In March the certified members of SAATA meet for a 2-day Vision Workshop led by Aruna and me.
This note will not be complete without thanking my colleague, friend and our dear SAATA Secretary Suriya, who will be completing his term in December 2022. I want to extend gratitude and appreciation for the selfless contribution he has made in innumerable ways and for the support he has given me unconditionally.
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