History
How it started..
On March 11, 1993 the first constituent meeting of the International Committee from which the ETDF-FEFD emerged took place in Paris at GARF's head office. In attendance were: Pedro Pinilla Cordova (Spain-AEDIPE), Ennio Baldini and Dante Bellamio (Italy-AIF), Janine Fraiche and Lucette le Molaire (France-GARF) and George Webster (United Kingdom-ITD).
In June 1993 AIF and AEDIPE took part in the GARF conference in Baule.
At the end of October 1993 the French Federation and the objectives of the International Committee were disclosed at the AIF Annual Conference in Parma by GARF's General Delegate. Through a number of meetings it was possible to establish a partnership of professional trust among the Committee members. They soon realised the need to merge our associations - AEDIPE, AIF, GARF and ITD - into the European network of ETDO-OEFD.
This had been established in 1991 as the European chapter of the International Federation of Training and Development organisations, which brought together many thousands of members.
During the ETDO Board of Directors meeting in Hamburg in 1993, the International Committee gave Dante Bellamio (AIF) responsibility for the changes to the ETDO-OEFD charter in order to merge new European associations into the new network. The chairman, George Webster, accepted many of the changes: the no-profit principle, the notion of a full-member Executive Board, a new procedure for the representative members, a new election system but had reservations about changing the initials. In its turn GARF defended the changes at the ETDO-OEFD Convention in Palma de Majorca in June 1994 where the AEDIPE Conference was also taking place.
On December 18, 1993 at the Executive Board in Barcelona, George Webster gave his resignation from the ETDO-OETD presidency. Pedro Cordova took his place and kept the European network initials. However, for AIF and GARF these initials were confusing as some organisations belonging to ETDO-OEFD, organised training sessions under the IFS label and issued certificates. This practice was not approved by Italy and France, which insisted on the non-commercial nature of the European organisation.
New negotiations took place in London in March 1994 between ITD (United Kingdom), APG (Portugal), AEDIPE (Spain), HENRY (Finland), NVO2 (Netherlands) and IITD (Ireland). Finally on November 20, 1994, in Brussels, it was decided to create a new Federation under the initials ETDF-FEFD - the European Training and Development Federation. GARF was responsible for drawing up the charter during 1995. AEDIPE, AIF, APG, GARF, IITD and NVO2 worked towards the final version of the charter and its translation into English.
The first constituent office of ETDF-FEDF was set up on November 18, 1995 in Paris where Pedro Cordova (Spain) was appointed Chairman, Nysius van Rijn (Netherlands) and Vitor Carvalho (Portugal) Vice-Presidents, Bernard Mathey (France) General Secretary, Mario Jurlano (Italy) Treasurer and Dolores Carr (Ireland) General Member.
In January 1996 the charter and operating procedures were finally adopted in Rome and GARF submitted ETDF-FEFD's first balance sheet. On August 8 the ETDF-FEDF was registered at the Prefecture de Paris under French law, with its administrative office at 12 Rue Anne, Paris, [ this is also GARF's headquarters]. The first ETDF seminar "L' Europe et la Formation" was organised in Paris by GARF on November 22 and on November 23 the first General Assembly of the organisation was appointed for a period of two years.
On September 12, 1998, in Lisbon, a new Executive Committee was elected for two years : François Geffroy (France) was elected President, Luis Bento (Portugal) and Elio Vera (Italy) Vice Presidents, Roy Harrison (UK) Secretary General and Ed de Groot (Netherlands) Tresurer. Two Belgian associations (VoV and Epsilon), and the Swiss federation FSFE joined ETDF-FEFD.
On October 7, 2000, in London, the Executive Committee was elected for the period October 2000 - October 2002 : John Stevens (UK) was elected President, Luis Bento (Portugal) and Elio Vera (Italy) confirmed Vice Presidents, Imelda Graham (Ireland) and Armin Raimann (Switzerland) General Secretaries and Hans Brouwer (Netherlands) Treasurer. François Geffroy (France) remains in the Executive Committee as Past President.
Catherine Puzenat,
GARF representative.
With support from the European Union.