ISA
International Stuttering Association

A world that understands stuttering

Our main objective is: To improve the conditions for children, adolescents and adults who stutter and parents of children who stutter in all countries, by:

1. Sharing concepts and information about self-help and therapy methods.
   
2. Outreach to make the movement bigger.
   
3. Facilitating communication and cooperation.
   
4. Educating the general public.
   
5. Stimulating research.
   
6. Being an advocate.
   
7. Assisting in founding of international working groups.
   
8. Initiating public relations projects.
   

* From Thomas Krall Keynote speech given in the 3rd IFA
Congress in Nighborg, Denmark, August 2000

The ISA has been involved in many projects, both on its own, and in cooperation with other organizations including the IFA and ELSA. ISA activities have focussed on several areas, each handled by a different working group .

ISA activities includes the following:

1. International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD)
2. International Speech Project – Stuttering (ISP)
3. Newsletter - One Voice 
4. ISA Web Site
5. Outreach
6. World Congress

International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD)

Since 1998, every year on October 22 we celebrate ISAD. Isn't this an excellent joint project between ISA, IFA and ELSA? Haven't we already accomplished a lot together?
The self-help groups and the national associations become very active and creative when International Stuttering Awareness Day approaches. The Stuttering Homepage is the home of the regular online conferences on stuttering every October from October 1 to 22. There is big media coverage in many countries. People who stutter from self-help groups as well as professionals are interviewed for TV and newspapers. Excellent projects, interesting discussions and parties occur around the World around October 22. It is so gratifying to see how the national associations use this Day for working and celebrating.
Michael Sugarman and his great team, Amy Johnson, Judy Kuster and many, many others work enthusiastically to promote this day every year. Isn't International Stuttering Awareness Day an excellent model for further future cooperation of the stuttering community together with the professionals? This year, International Stuttering Awareness Day 2000, is dedicated to children who stutter. We are so curious how the self-help groups, the national associations and the professionals will create International Stuttering Awareness Day:

October 22, 2000
A World Day for our stuttering kids!

Newsletter "One Voice"

One of the major projects of ISA is our newsletter, One Voice, which is published twice a year and is now a joint project with ELSA.
It offers a good overview of ISA activities and of its vision for the future. Recent issues are available on the ISA website.

ISA Website

At a meeting in August 2000 in Nyborg, Denmark, during the Third World Congress on Fluency Disorders, organized by the International Fluency Association (IFA), the ISA Board of Directors decided to update the original ISA website. ISA owes thanks to Eddy Orlowsky, of the Netherlands, who created the original ISA website following the ISA founding meeting in Sweden in 1995.

The goal of the new site at www.stutterisa.org is to create a global self-help network for people who stutter and a meeting point for stuttering on the internet.

Looking at the above goal and at the same time looking at our world, the ISA board concluded that the ISA website is in fact a place of dreams. For that reason, the ISA website features sky blue and white colors to give an impression of being in clouds or in a world of dreams.

The site is based on development guidelines which specify that it:

• Be a reflection of the ISA mission.

• Be the official voice of ISA along with One Voice.

• Provide a forum in which ISA member associations can express their opinions and desires.

The ISA board also specified that the site should include an emphasized link to the Stuttering Home Page. Accordingly, there is a link to the latter site on the upper left corner on each page of the ISA website.

By way of meeting operational requirements

• The ISA website will be maintained and updated by a webmaster group.

• The webmaster group will be a group of people and not a single individual, to eliminate dependency on just one person.

• The site will be built in a way that it can be easily modified or updated, and not necessarily by the originator.

The webmaster group focuses on collecting content for the site, web design and implementation of the website.

The group welcomes volunteers. Please contact the webmaster group at webmaster@stutterisa.org for more information.

Outreach

Our outreach projects are a particularly important aspect of ISA activity. In many countries national self-help organizations have not yet been set up, but we are frequently approached by individuals in these regions. Although ISA is primarily an umbrella organization for existing national organizations, we have created a special category of members: a group of special friends of the ISA.