NOTTWIL, Switzerland, 31. March 2006 – Slovene paraplegic assotiation today took part in a historical moment. Together with 16 other national organizations we founded Europen assotiation of paraplegics and tetraplegics (ESCIF). These are the countries that also participated besides Slovenia: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, England, Scotladn, Ireland, Spain, Lithuania, Belgium, Austria, Croatia and Switzerland.

The most important vision of the founding congress is to unite people with back injury around Europe and later all around the world. The main function of our new international organization is to ensure: close relations beetwen national assotiations, working together on the issues of social integration, exchange of informations and also guarding the interests of individual national assotiations in connection to each other.

At the congress we had to synchronize the suggestions for the first drawing of the statute.  Considering different types of organization of the national assotiations, we made a few important desicions.
-We decided on the name of the organization in English, which most suitablly represents us.
-Every country has at most two delegats and one voting voice.
-Minimum yearlly membership was set to 300 Euros for the year 2006.
-The most important organ of the new organization is Assembly of delegats. It`s chairman, together with managing board and secretary, is the one who represents the organization to the public. The chairman and the managing board are elected every four years.
-We elected dr. Daniel Joggi (Switzerland) for the chairman position. We voted Pekka Hatinenen (Finska), Ester Peris (Španija) and Adrian Odonell (Anglija) in the managing board. The assotiations secretary is Urs Styger (Switzerland).

TRAINING OF PARAPLEGICS FOR AN ACTIVE LIFE AND WORK

We aim to train paraplegics, teaching them for a new life, or rather for the new conditions of life that arise after their injury. We try to motivate them, raising their self-confidence, helping them to overcome stressful periods, increasing the percentage of those employed, and above all assisting them to overcome any inferiority complex arising from their invalidity.

The programme is intended for new paraplegics, for paraplegics transferring from institutional care to their home environment or for those coming from their home environment into another place. For some this means that perhaps for the first time they will experience a completely independent life (as students). The first criterion is the paraplegic as an individual. In this programme we pay attention to the individual's needs, which immediately after the injury are highly specific and different until that person finds his or her own way of life and motivation. The programme is implemented by the Association of Paraplegics with its own professional staff, external colleagues (defectologists, psychologists, architects) and the appropriate professional services.