Organization
IBBY's policies and programmes are determined by its Executive Committee: ten people from different countries and a President, working on a voluntary basis and selected biennially by the National Sections at a General Assembly during the IBBY Congresses. The Executive Committee works within the framework of the IBBY Statutes. The daily management of IBBY's affairs is conducted from its Secretariat in Basel, Switzerland.
The National Sections are organized in many different ways and operate on national, regional and international levels. In countries that do not have a National Section, individual Membership in IBBY is possible.
President
Wally De Doncker from Belgium was elected to serve for his second term as IBBY President. He trained as a teacher and served as a special teacher of children’s literature. He began writing full-time in 2001 and since then, his books have reached readers in more than thirteen countries in Europe and beyond. For many years De Doncker was an active board member of the Flemish Branch of IBBY-Belgium. In 2008 he was elected to serve as a member of the IBBY Executive Committee for the period 2008-2010. He was re-elected in 2010 and served as Vice-President from 2010 to 2012. He is a frequent contributor to publications that deal with the international dimension of children’s literature, and is a regular guest in libraries, schools and other settings where children and adults come to enjoy his readings.
New Year's Letter, 2016
E-mail: wally.de.donckertelenet.LÖSCHEN.be
Website: users.telenet.be/wally.de.doncker1
Executive Commitee
Vice-Presidents
Evelyn B. Freeman from the USA, retired as Dean and Director of The Ohio State University-Mansfield where she served from 2003 until December 2010. She is currently Professor Emerita in the Department of Teaching and Learning and teaches courses in children’s literature and language arts. She has been an active member of USBBY for more than two decades, serving as its secretary for three years. She served as co-editor of Bookbird from 2001-04 and was elected to the IBBY Executive Committee in 2014. She is IBBY Vice-President for the term 2016-18.
Mingzhou Zhang from China first served on the IBBY Executive Committee from 2008 to 2012 and was the 2012 Chair of the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award. He was re-elected to the EC in 2014. He was the organizer of the 2006 IBBY World Congress held in Macau, China and is currently the General Manager of the CCPPG (Chinese Children’s Press and Publications Group) International division and Vice President of CBBY – IBBY China. He is IBBY Vice-President for the term 2016-18.
Members
Anastasia Arkhipova from Russia is a well-known illustrator who has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1986 and a member of Russian IBBY since 2005. She has served on several international juries, including the BIB Jury in 2007, 2009 and 2015, the Nami Island International Concours 2012 and 2015, and the Hans Christian Andersen Jury for the 2012 and 2014 Awards. In 2006 she was elected to the IBBY Executive Committee and served until 2010.
Carole Bloch from South Africa is currently the Executive Director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa – PRAESA – an independent research and development unit affiliated to the University of Cape Town. In 2015 she was founding member and a trustee of the Nal’ibali Trust, and in 2014 a member of the South African Ministry of Education reading advisory committee. Under her leadership PRAESA received the 2014 IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award and in 2015 PRAESA won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA).
Hasmig Chahinian from France was born and grew up in Lebanon. She is currently in charge of children’s literature from the Arab World at the international division of the French National Centre for Children’s Literature – Centre national de la literature pour la jeunesse - La Joie par les livres – a service of the French National Library. She served as a member of the IBBY Executive Committee for two terms from 2010 to 2014 – from 2012 as Vice President.
Zohreh Ghaeni from Iran is an expert in literature for children, lecturer, researcher, editor, historian, and co-author of the History of Children's Literature in Iran (10 volumes). She is a member of the Children's Book Council and was a member of the Andersen Award Jury in 2002 and 2004, and was later elected as Jury President for the 2008 and 2010 Awards. She has also been a member of the CineKid International Jury in 2005, and a member of the International Jury for the Nami Concours in 2013, 2015 and 2017. She leads the reading promotion project "Read with Me" – one of the winners of the 2016 IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award.
Ferelith Hordon from the UK worked as a professional children’s librarian in public libraries for over forty years where she was active in community literacy working with parents, children and schools. She has been a member of IBBY UK since the 1980s and a member of the IBBY UK Committee; she also served on the Organizing Committee for the IBBY World Congress in London 2012. She is currently is editor of IBBYLink, the IBBY UK journal and the children’s book review online journal Books for Keeps. She was first elected to the IBBY Executive Committee in 2014.
Sunjidmaa Jamba from Mongolia is the Founding Member and Director of Mongolian IBBY and a member of the Board of the Council for Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility. As an External Affairs and Partnership Officer at the World Bank, she was responsible for external affairs of the Bank operation and activities in Mongolia. She also managed the Governance Project and Community Initiative programmes funded by the World Bank jointly with other international and Mongolian institutions. She was first elected to the IBBY Executive Committee in 2014. She is the President of the 2018 IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award.
Serpil Ural from Turkey was re-elected after serving on the Executive Committee since 2014. She was a founding member of IBBY Turkey in 1994 and has been an active member since then. She served on the Turkish IBBY Executive Committee from 2000-2002, 2014-2015 and is currently the President of IBBY Turkey. She has been writing and illustrating children’s books since 1978 and her works have been published in Turkey and abroad. She has won various awards and was Turkey’s author nominee for the 2014 Andersen Award.
Maria Cristina Vargas from Mexico has been working for IBBY Mexico for the past five years. She coordinates the annual publishing of the Guía de libros recomendados para niños y jóvenes (Catalogue of Recommended Books for Young People) by IBBY Mexico, and is the Section’s link to the Iberoamerican publishing houses, authors and illustrators. She was a co-organizer of the 34th IBBY Congress held in Mexico City in 2014. In 2015 she was a member of the jury of the Premio Iberoamericano de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil SM (Iberoamerican Award of Young People Literature SM).
President of the Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury
Patricia Aldana (Toronto, Canada) was elected to be the Hans Christian Andersen Jury President 2016
Patricia was born and brought up in Guatemala. She moved to Canada in 1971 after attending school in the United States. Patricia founded the publishing house Groundwood Books in 1978 and remained its publisher until 2012. Groundwood's mandate was and has remained the publication of the highest quality Canadian and international children's books for all ages. Groundwood’s list has been recognized for including marginalized voices, especially those of Native People.
She is a tireless champion of school libraries and an advocate for the freedom to read. She is the co-founder of Canada’s National Reading Campaign and is its current Chair. She received the Order of Canada in 2010 for her contribution to children’s literature.
Patricia first joined the IBBY Executive Committee in 1996 and served until 2002. She was re-elected in 2004 and served as Vice-President until 2006, when she was elected President of IBBY for two terms from 2006 to 2010. She is currently in her second term as President of the IBBY Foundation.
Her international work through IBBY has focused on bringing children and books together, especially in countries that do not have a reading tradition. She was instrumental in establishing the IBBY-Yamada Fund as well as the IBBY Children in Crisis programme.
Patricia has been invited to speak on children's books around the world and is well known for her passionate promotion of reading and her commitment to translation. As President of IBBY Patricia travelled extensively to promote IBBY and its activities.
Treasurer
Ellis Vance (Fresno, USA) was re-confirmed as IBBY Treasurer at the 34th IBBY General Assembly in Mexico City, Mexico. He has served as IBBY Treasurer since 2008.
After receiving a Master's Degree in Education, Ellis worked as a teacher and school administrator for 40 years in the Fresno area in California. He supervised library services to children in 38 school districts in the country for a number of years before retiring. He has also taught reading methods, library services and children's literature courses at three universities in the Fresno area. From 2004-2007 he was Project Director for the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) reviewing resources for educators to use with children. CLRN's website is used throughout the US and in 80 countries.
After 42 years in education, he is currently an education consultant and devotes most of his time to USBBY and IBBY. He has received numerous awards in the fields of education and reading and been an active member of USBBY for many years. He is the current Bookbird Inc. Treasurer, and also served as the USBBY Treasurer until 2008. He is currently the Executive Secretary of USBBY and organizer of the 12th IBBY Regional Conference in Seattle, Washington in October 2017.
Ellis served as Vice President of IBBY 2006-2008 having been elected at the 30th IBBY General Assembly in Macau, China.
Secretariat
Liz Page grew up and lived in England until 1985 when she and her family moved to Basel. She soon became involved with JuKiBu, the Intercultural Children’s Library in Basel, of which she was a founding member. Later she was elected President of the Intercultural Children’s Libraries Association of Switzerland. She joined IBBY as Executive Assistant in 1997, worked as Administrative Director from 2003-2006 and Director of Member Services, Communications and New Projects until March 2009, when she was appointed Executive Director.
Luzmaria Stauffenegger-Lobato was born and grew up in Mexico City. She studied Graphic Design in Mexico and in 1985 attended a two-year post-graduate programme at the School of Design in Basel, where she later settled in 1990. She collaborated as a Designer and performed various administrative tasks in the Basel design office of Stauffenegger + Stutz from 1990-2010. In 2008 she volunteered at the JUKIBU intercultural library in Basel and in the following year she became involved with the Baobab Children's Book Fund reading panel for the project Fremde Welten (other worlds). She joined IBBY as Administrative Assistant in January 2011.
Susan Dewhirst was born and grew up in Canada. She studied economics and international relations at the University of Toronto and continued her graduate studies in international economics in Geneva. After working for an investment bank in London she returned to Switzerland in 1990 and worked for over ten years on financial projects for a pharmaceutical company in Basel. Thereafter, she pursued studies in English, American and German literature. She joined IBBY as Administrative Assistant in November 2014.
Membership
What is IBBY
The International Board on Books for Young People is a non-profit organization that represents an international network of people from all over the world who are committed to bringing books and children together. Today, IBBY is represented by 75 National Sections worldwide, with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.
How to join IBBY
National Sections are organized in many different ways and operate on national, regional and international levels. In countries with an established National Section, we invite you to join your local Section. If there is no National Section in your country and you believe that your country could support and benefit from IBBY, it is possible for groups to apply for membership as a National Section. For further information about establishing a National Section, please contact the IBBY Secretariat.
Alternatively, Individual Membership of IBBY is possible wherever there is no existing National Section. We also welcome Supporting Members who prefer to support IBBY globally rather than nationally.
All forms of membership have to be approved by the IBBY Executive Committee. The IBBY Secretariat will be happy to provide you with the necessary information.
IBBY Membership
National Sections
National Sections represent IBBY in their country. Each Section receives all IBBY information: IBBY Newsletter, Press Releases, IBBY’s journal Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. Every Section is entitled to vote in the IBBY Membership Assembly and have the right to nominate the serving IBBY Officers, including the members of the Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury. In addition, the National Sections have the exclusive right to nominate candidates for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award and titles for the IBBY Honour List.
The National Sections are expected to pay annual membership dues and submit a biennial report of their activities. The IBBY Executive Committee sets the level of dues for each National Section following criteria that include the member country’s economic standing, its standard of living, its children’s book production and the country’s presence on the international book market. The dues are reviewed annually. When prospective members apply to establish a National Section, in certain situations a starter discount for the first year of membership is available, or entry into a special programme of Aspirant Membership for developing countries is possible.
Individual Members
If a National Section does not exist in your country it is possible to apply for Individual Membership of IBBY. Individual Members receive all IBBY information: IBBY Newsletter, Press Releases, IBBY’s journal Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. Individual Members are always invited to attend IBBY events.
The annual fees for Individual Members are CHF 250.00. (Swiss Francs)
Supporting Members
Supporting Membership is for individuals or institutions that wish to support IBBY globally. Supporting Members receive all IBBY information: IBBY Newsletter, Press Releases, IBBY’s journal Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. The annual dues expected from Supporting Members are a minimum of CHF 1,000.00 (Swiss Francs) for individuals or CHF 2,000.00 for institutions.
How to apply for IBBY Membership
Contact the IBBY Secretariat: ibbyibby.LÖSCHEN.org