We had a wonderful meeting in Lyon in a great number of 30 participants from 21 schools. We started with news from OsEAN:
- Student Exchange Programmes is running very well with 74 students who went on exchange to a different country. The feedback was fantastic and the students who went were so enthusiastic that they started a spark in their colleagues as well.
- Teacher Training Programme – is running for the moment but some changes will be done in order to offer even better organisation of the different modules.
- Until now all of our members are certified by the Austrian Standards Institute. Certified on the CEN-Standard and the OsEAN Standard (based on ISO 29990). Schools who missed the chanes to do the audit within the given deadline a well as schools that decided it not to undergo it are no longer members of the organisation.
- OsEAN is working together with the EFFO to make it possible for alumni of audited schools to be accepted also from registers in other countries than the one where the degree was obtained. This project has still a long way to go but we are doing our best to move it forward.
- The Open Forum 2018 ‘Teaching Osteopathic Diagnostics’ was held in Lyon (France) on the 18th and 19th October 2018. This Open Forum was the largest so far with 100 participants from all ver Europe, Canada, Australia and even Malaysia.
One new schools was officially accepted as an associate member. Warm welcome to the family of high quality educational institutions CERDO (Italy).
One potential member presented their school to the participants in order to start the Application Process of becoming a Member of OsEAN. SOMA has already undergo the audit and we are waiting to see the final results before the school is being put up for vote to become a member.
The news from our members were all positive, some have moved to bigger buildings, some are opening new schools in other countries, others are investing more into research.
Two board members stepped down after their terms ended this year and two new members were voted for. Welcome to the Board of Directors to Marcello Marasco (founder and principal of AbeOS) and to Jöry Pauwels (co-principal of FICO Belgium and FICO Poland).
Future meetings and topics of interests were discussed. Our next meeting will be held in Torino at the beginning of May 2019.
We had a lovely diner in the middle of the old town of Lyon. Here, in an informal way, the Members communicated with each other on different topics concerning Osteopathy, and of course delicious French food.
All in all a wonderful meeting, good work has been done and a lot of interchanging knowledge and experience has been gained. That is what OsEAN is for!