BPRA now an Official Chapter of IABC

When I posted on the inaugural meeting of the Barbados Public Relations Association, I did it with great anticipation.

It signaled my valiant attempt at making real my dream to have a local PR association, well aware that the previous efforts had failed.

When I contacted the International Association of Business Communicators and explained my desire to align the BPRA online community with a world-class corporate communicators association they excitedly endorsed my vision and then pointed me to a downloadable pdf file filled with criteria that I was sure weighed a little less than most new borns!

That was back in October 2007.

Today, as I look back at the seven months of networking with local practitioners, the several weeks of planning for the inaugural meeting and the pivotal two hours that it took to host that session, I am pleased to know that it has begun to pay off!

We are now officially IABC Barbados!

VP Administration, Petal Barclay Smith; VP Professional Development, Richard Thomas; Executive Vice President, Pamala Proverbs; President, Christal P. McIntosh; VP Membership/ Marketing, Cliona Donohue; VP Finance, Fay Best; and VP Communications, Lynette G. Taylor. (Photo compliments PBS Communications)

Birthing this organization in the unbelievably short time of about four weeks following our inaugural meeting, was largely due to the strong support we continue to receive from the local community.

I would like to publicly acknowledge the immeasurable support of the entire Board of Directors and all who have rallied behind this vision thus far.

Judette Coward-Puglisi, the President and Founder of IABC TT, who was our featured speaker at our first meeting; Gretchen Hoover, VP Chapter Relations and Development of IABC International, and Carol Barreyre, Chair of IABC's Southern Region, all of whom continue to be sturdy pillars of support; are but a smidgen of all those who continue to lend their full support to this dream of mine that is now a reality!

I must also send an e-shout out to BPRA member, Corey Graham 2.0, who, along with IABC Barbados President Elect, Pamala Proverbs, who have also blogged on the inaugural event! Follow their hyperlinks for great coverage if you missed it.



WHAT'S NEXT?

For the next two years IABC Barbados will enjoy “developmental chapter status”. This means the IABC appreciates that we are on a learning curve and will give us some time to find our wings. We have to use that time to prove our commitment to becoming a fully-fledged chapter.

One of the ways we are looking forward to achieving this is through building a strong membership base. Membership in this association, which has been set at US $231 if you include the one-time $40 application fee, will be one of the best investments a communications professional could make. And that membership is yours to keep no matter where you end up living and working.

While we were awaiting formal chapter approval, the board of directors who were elected at that inaugural meeting (one of the many steps that needed to be made for IABC to embrace our association) has not been idle. We have been meeting every Thursday evening for several hours to come to grips with our various responsibilities and to scope out what we have to do quickly to get up and running.

We have also put together a tentative schedule for professional development and networking opportunities over 12 months, starting this August. However, we haven’t got every topic and event nailed down, because we want to hear from our members rather than making all decisions on our own.

This is why we have also developed a short survey, IABC Barbados Membership Survey.doc, to aid us in gathering much needed demographic profiles of our target market and how best to cater to their needs.

If you are interested in leveraging the benefits of our association please complete it and return it by e-mail to our co-Vice President of Professional Development, Vicki Olton: vicki.olton@gmail.com. It will help us enormously.

We are also working on how best to market the IABC and to whom. We know that there are many more communication professionals out there besides all of you who showed up for our first meeting.

And there are lots of people in allied professions – such as HR, printing, photography and graphic design – who are valid potential members. We are digging to uncover them, in both the corporate and public sectors but we'd appreciate any help we can get.

We plan to hold our inaugural meeting as a registered IABC chapter on July 3 at 6:00 p.m. at Herbert House on Fontabelle. By then, I trust that our membership would have expanded as the word gets out that there is finally a home for local business communicators to seeking to improve their organizational effectiveness through strategic communication.

I will keep you posted about the format and content of that meeting, as soon as we have finalized the details.

Again, thank you for your support. And if you haven’t already joined up and you believe you can do with a little help in communicating more strategically to, do it now!

Yours sincerely,

Christal P. McIntosh
President
IABC Barbados