SAFA Skysailor Magazine

6 SKY SAILOR November | December 2021 FAI Award I am pleased to advise members that the FAI have recently announced their award recipients for 2021 and SAFA has been awarded a Group Diploma of Honour. SAFA was nominated for the award by the Air Sport Australia Confederation (ASAC). Diplomas were established by the FAI to recognise indi- viduals and/or groups that have contributed significantly to the progress of Aeronautics or Astronautics over the previous year or years. SAFA’s contribution to sports aviation over many years made it a worthy recipient of this award. The award will be presented on 9 November at 1900 UTC time via the FAI website www.fai.org . Canungra Photo: Dave Gibbs President’s Update by Paul Green SAFA Strategic Plan Our Strategic Plan has been updated in both content and layout and the first six pages are featured from Page 22 in this edition of Skysailor. The full document is available via the members area of the SAFA website under Documents/Strategic Plan. Members can expect to see progress on a number of initi- atives within this plan over the coming year. Much volunteer time has been invested during the last three years on the strengthening of our governance and its associated rewrite of policies and procedures whilst our staff have been kept extremely busy with the transition of our regulatory framework to Part 149. Work in all these areas remains ongoing, however, we are now in a position to start to focus on projects that will continue to update and evolve our sport. Women with Wings Attendees at the recent NSWHPA AGM had the opportunity to witness a very professional presentation outlining plans for the growth of female participation in our SAFA disciplines. The NSWHPA has established a female pilot sub-committee and strategic alliance with Women with Wings. They have recently received substantial funding from the NSW Government for a well developed plan of activities that have been opened to female pilots Australia wide. The presentation was conducted by Judith De Groot, Kaz Waller and Natalia Huber. Kaz and Natalia also presented their plans to the SAFA Board and Operations staff and we look forward to supporting their initiatives. We encourage other Regional Associations to liaise with Kaz and Natalia to see what the ladies have planned – it will be well worth your effort.