Association News
- Country/Area Council Summary for May 2021
- President's Message
- Committee Council Report April 2021: Thriving During Pandemic - APCDA Leads the Way
- APCDA Statement of Solidarity with People of East Asian Decent
- Discovering What People Value about APCDA
- Career Support for Arabic Youth Boosted by QCDC’s Arabic Edition of Career Development Terms Glossary
- APCDA Ethical Guidelines
- APCDA Career Services Competencies
- APCDA Logos for Members
Country/Area Council SummaryMay 2021By Hector Lin
Australia: COVID caused job loss, but economy is recovering well. New tools are available free from the government and Career Week May 17-23. Azerbaijan: Making exciting improvements in career services offered, including government employment centers, university courses in career planning, and Ministry of Education focus on career guidance. Canada: COVID is still a major concern in Canada. The government has launched several major programs to identify the skill that will be need in the future, help Canadians to up-skill, and to make job transitions based on the skills they have. Indonesia: Progressing in survey needs for career planning services, increasing the services provided, and building the Career Counselor Training program at Krida University. Also working on translating APCDA’s Glossary, Ethical Guidelines, and Competencies into Indonesian and building participation in APCDA. Japan: The hiring season has started. It is not as big as in past years, but the activities are normal. Japan has 7 new APCDA members and a large group are attending the conference. JCDA now has over 20,000 members. Kazakhstan: 6% of the population has been vaccinated. Universities are using a combination of online and in-person courses and career fairs. The labor market has begun to recover, but employment is still heavily affected by COVID. Korea: Progress continues on the High School Credit System which will be implemented I 2025 and will allow more variety of courses for high school students. In addition, a new licensing system has been proposed that requires a background in psychology for all professionals offering counseling services. New Zealand is still closed to outsiders, but has had very few incidents of COVID and recently held an in-person one-day career conference in Auckland. The Career Development Association of New Zealand (CDANZ) is working on a new Client Relationship Management system. The Accident Compensation Corporation, which is part of the public health system for New Zealand, is working with CDANZ on its proposed “Back to Work Service.” Philippines: The Manila region is experiencing significant restrictions due to COVID, schools are online, and online learning is the primary mode of gaining new skills. Singapore: PCDA is offering valuable webinars and approaching Workforce Singapore and employers to discuss introducing career development in the workplace. 2-Jul to 15-Aug 2021 is SkillsFuture month in Singapore. South China: Veganism has been embraced by the Chinese government in response to the concern about the spread of viruses in “wet markets” and climate change. Dao Foods is now a major developer of vegan products sold in many countries. Sri Lanka: The Central Bank reported that In 2020, the percent of labor market declined slightly and unemployment increased slightly while the number people working outside the country dramatically decreased. This report indicates the stress the economy was experiencing during the pandemic. The Asian Development Bank has approved a loan for upskilling Sri Lankan youth. Taiwan: Several exciting new initiatives are announced in this report, including the opening of the Women Empowerment Center in the historic district in Taipei. COVID is still a concern, but Taiwan traced the case occurring when people enter the country quickly so that it has not spread into the local population. USA: A list of conferences, new books, articles, and other resources for our field is provided. Vietnam: The Vietnam CDP (Career Development Practitioners) announces the release of the Competency Framework in Vietnamese and describes the journey to create this important resource tool. It is also proud to have increased its membership by 80% in one year. |
The Country/Area Council met on May 5 and reports from this meeting can be found on the Country Information Pages on our website. Please use the links below to read these reports and learn the details behind these short summaries.
Committee Council Report April 2021: Thriving During Pandemic - APCDA Leads the WayBy Allan Gatenby, Committee Council Chair
Highlights from the Committee Council include:
Leadership & Professional Learning opportunities: in this climate of growth and increasing spirit there comes increasing opportunities for members to grow through leadership. Participation in any of the committees is a professionally enriching activity, from which everyone benefits. Consider the benefits of joining a committee, contributing to the news blog, reflecting upon your own practice and share your thoughts and recommendations. As we say to our clients “be active, to be attractive.” So should we do.
Statement of Solidarity with People of East Asian Decent
We continue to work in partnership with those who envision a just, safe, and caring world. We rededicate ourselves to supporting the worth, dignity, potential, and uniqueness of everyone and honoring diversity. Indeed, any form of violence against any individuals is equally abhorrent, whether it is based on gender, race, labor, class, immigration, or country of origin. We ask all members to stand in solidarity, challenge discriminatory systems, and also confront our own biases, stereotypes, and racial worldview. Approved by the APCDA Board of Directors April 1, 2021. Send comments to info@AsiaPacificDCA.org
Response by MembersI deeply appreciated this united stance as an organization regarding this recent social issue that’s happening in other developed/higher income countries. News from my relatives in the U.S. and Australia saddens me as they are either fearful to go out and be bullied during this time or perhaps shy away from being a Filipino. Though as a guidance counselor I would like to understand this behavior as one of the offshoots of the health crisis, I hope this shall end and not exacerbate the racism that has long been a social ill. |
When leadership is shared, and
collaboration drives the organization then in times of challenge the
organization will thrive. This is the experience of APCDA. New memberships are
up. Number of scholarships applications have increased from 5 to 24. Inter-committee
collaboration has increased and from both News and Programs Committees we see
evidence of increasing strategic alignment with both professional competencies
and member engagement. The conference is quickly approaching full subscription.
This is the good news. All thanks must go to the Committee Chairs &
Co-chairs with the support of staff and leadership.
Part of APCDA’s mission is to promote intercultural understanding, diversity, and inclusion in the Asia Pacific region. During the pandemic, in some parts of our region, acts of violence against people of East Asian decent have increased. APCDA condemns these attacks and asks that all of us take action to prevent scenarios where hate, discrimination, bullying, and inequity are allowed. Hateful acts cannot be accepted and will only decline if we act collectively to stop them.
At the beginning of November 2020, we added Google Analytics to our website at the request of the Qatar Foundation, because they wanted to know how many people download the Arabic version of the Glossary, which they translated for us. Google Analytics is a free service that counts the number of visits to webpages. It reports on:
Career Support for Arabic Youth Boosted by QCDC’s Arabic Edition of Career Development Terms GlossaryInitiative part of QCDC’s ongoing efforts to promote Arabic language resources
Primarily intended to serve as a resource for professionals in the career development and vocational assessment field, the Arabic guide will assist career counselors, academic advisors, career practitioners, human resource professionals, trainers and teachers working with Qatari and Arab youth, across the region and globally, in planning their career paths. Given the diversity of the field, the glossary is an important step toward establishing a shared understanding of commonly used terms and phrases. The Arabic edition will be dynamic and continue to develop and grow as experts suggest improvements or additions to its contents. QCDC, a Qatar Foundation (QF) member, has long endeavored to address the gap in Arabic resources in the field of career guidance and professional development, which continues to pose an obstacle to QCDC’s mission to provide support services for Arab youth. Mr. Abdulla Al-Mansoori, Director, QCDC, said: “Through this latest initiative, QCDC has made an important contribution to the promotion of the Arabic language, offering a resource to Arabic speakers and professionals around the world for creating impactful content and training programs. The achievement will empower career development experts to better guide our youth, not only in Qatar but all across the Arab World, on their ambitious career journeys.” APCDA is a non-profit association incorporated for educational purposes in the state of Maryland, USA, providing training for specialists engaged in facilitating career development in the Asia Pacific region. Conferences, workshops and networking events enable the exchange of knowledge and collaboration on professional projects. The initial development of the Glossary in English stemmed from APCDA’s objective for the Asia Pacific region to speak the same language related to career planning and development. The English language glossary was completed in 2017, with the aim of eventually offering versions in all languages spoken by its members. Gulnur Ismayil-Isparova, Executive Director, APCDA, said: We embrace more than 300 members from over 20 countries around the world under the APCDA umbrella. Association is a wide multicultural and multilingual platform. It is important for us to ensure the exchange of ideas and best practices is communicated smoothly. The Glossary gives us chance to understand each other and effectively serve our clients in various corners of our regional coverage. We are thankful to Qatar Career Development Center for this valuable contribution and opening access to the APCDA glossary for Arabic speaking nationalities.” As a member of APCDA, QCDC has traditionally participated in their annual conference and the publication of an Arabic edition of the glossary was therefore the next logical step, which enables APCDA to now offer this important resource to all its members. In recent years, QF has increased its efforts to promote Arabic, the world’s sixth most spoken language. QF has launched several initiatives to address the challenges of modernizing academic programs and incentivizing linguistic institutions to keep abreast of technological advances in a bid to promote classical Arabic, which faces intense competition from colloquial dialects. In keeping up with that mission and as part of its own efforts to promote career guidance resources in Arabic, QCDC was the first institution to offer the Career Advisor Training Course in both Arabic and English, in Qatar and the GCC region. The program aims to equip professionals with the basic skills and knowledge to offer career planning and counseling services to guide Qatari youth to embark on career paths. More than 150 participants have successfully graduated from the program to date. |
Doha, Qatar, 15 November 2020: A successful collaboration between Qatar Career Development Center (QCDC) and the Asia Pacific Career Development Association (APCDA) has culminated in the Arabization of the Glossary of Career Development Terms, which will benefit Arabic speakers and professionals around the world.
Announcing the NewAPCDA Ethical GuidelinesAdopted October 2020 by the APCDA Board
According to Dr. Brian Hutchison, “Upon reflection, this is what makes us a professional body in that we are a band of similar and dissimilar professionals in so many intricate ways that only an agreed upon set of principles, grounded in common values makes us one body. It does not feel like hyperbole to me to say that today I think APCDA became a professional organization in the truest sense of the word.” We recommend that each member read these ethical guidelines and think about their implications for practice. In order to make them come to life for our members, Dr. Chopra has planned a series of Member Webinars in 2021 to review case studies related to ethics and discus our real life examples of time when ethics may get trampled by expediency or financial constraints. We hope you will join these webinars/ You can find the APCDA Ethical Guidelines here, which is under Resources on our website. |
The APCDA Board wishes to express its sincere gratitude to the Ethics Taskforce which has just completed its work of reviewing the original APCDA Ethical Guidelines, questioning every word, comparing our statements to those our other career practitioner associations, and including wording appropriate to the many countries that are represented by APCDA. This taskforce consisted of Dr. Joseph Chan (Hong Kong), Dr. Vandana Gambhir-Chopra (India), Leonila Urrea (Philippines), Gulnur Ismayil-Isparova (Azerbaijan), and Dr. Marilyn Maze (USA).
APCDA Career Services CompetenciesApril 2020
This Competencies List is intended to be used in conjunction with the APCDA Glossary of Career Development Terms. The definitions of terms will be helpful in understanding these competencies. These Competencies reference the APCDA Ethical Guidelines, which are available here: https://AsiaPacificCDA.org/ethical-guidelines This list will be revised as needed. Suggestions for additions and revisions should be submitted to Ethics@AsiaPacificCDA.org. |
After months of work, the Standards Taskforce is proud to announce the new list of 
APCDA Member Logos
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Members are invited to get a copy of the new Member Logo from the APCDA Website. Now that we have a legal agreement published on our website, is it possible for us to provide a logo for use by our members. We currently have three kinds of member logos:
If you fall into the third group, you should have received the logo from us by email. |
If you fall into groups 1 or 2, please go to our website at