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 The past year was an exciting one infused with both challenges and opportunities for the National Network for Mental Health (NNMH). As we reflect on this past year, we are very mindful that we, at the NNMH have been given a gift, and that gift is called transition. At first, when we hear or see the word transition, one does not necessarily think of it as a positive, nor as a gift. However, after giving much thought and reflection, the NNMH Board of Directors, the staff, the membership, our funders and our community partners became aware of and acknowledged this time of transition as being filled with many gifts or opportunities. These opportunities will now be embraced and will enable us to lean into and embrace the challenges of the past year as we prepare strategically to move forward, onwards and upwards.
We are very pleased to now have a new NNMH National Executive Director and a new Board of Directors who have been elected by the membership for the next year of 2010-2011! Each and every one of our Board Directors, along with our NED, brings much passion, many gifts and seasoned skills which will serve to inform and carry out the work of the NNMH. Our Board currently has strong representation from every region of Canada and will now serve and strive to address the mental health and other determinants of health issues that are emerging within the remote rural/ rural and the urban areas of our fine country. As well, our Board makeup represents a fine example of a board that sees the embracement of the wonderful cultural diversity that is within our great Nation. We are proud to let you know that we have an even balance of having half of the NNMH Board who is bilingual in Canada's two official languages including two board members who are also trilingual. We are as well very proud to inform you that all of our Board Directors identify and relate on a very personal level, as well as on a very learned systemic level with the devastating issues related to poverty, low/no income, mental illness and discrimination. All of our Directors are at various stages of their own mental wellness recovery journey. All of our Directors are engaged in other work in the mental health field, predominately on the front line/grass roots and at the tables of other committee's and boards, either in the consumer/survivor/thriver movement, the mental health system, or in the broader community locally, provincially, nationally and internationally. We see these multiple, creative engagements and representations from our Board Directors at all levels and at various places in the community at large, as a huge gift to the NNMH; for their engagements will create the many bridges that serve to carry to and from the voices and the much needed work in order to assist each and every one of us to gain strength and resiliency as we support each other and as we strive to work together to have a meaningful, transformative mental health system in our beautiful country, Canada.
We look to the future for the NNMH with much hope and we would like to revisit the question our past President, Roy Muise asked of us last year, 'What does the future hold for the NNMH?' We would like to reiterate Roy's answer to us last year, which is so worth repeating, which is; 'we, at the NNMH are well positioned as a consumer voice, however, need to strengthen that voice and build our capacity. There is strength in numbers and I urge each and every one of you to support the NNMH by recruiting other members. If each one of us signed on just 5 new members our voice would grow even stronger. Funding will always be an issue, but we are working hard at exploring alternative funding sources as well as using what resources we have in a way to accomplish as much as possible. There is a ground swell of interest across Canada in mental illness and mental health and I see the National Network for Mental Health as taking a lead in this. Please join us.'
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