Importance of professional organizations
Professional organizations have been proposed to be important in individual or corporate realization of lifelong learning1. Membership to professional organizations depends on career for instance professional organizations for nurses. The organization serves to highlight problems in the industry, communicate on emerging developments in the field and provide opportunity for consultation2. Through professional organizations, members are able to network with peers, learn current trends in industry, and participate actively in discussions which promote active learning. Professional organizations benefit members through opportunities for attending seminars where members can network and grow businesses and careers; which implies that professional organizations provide opportunities for career development, search for new job opportunities and forums for social marketing due to competitiveness of social capital in marketing. Members gain from tax rebates that are not accessible to non-members, availability of pension or retirement plans3. However, professional organizations have disadvantages which decrease engagement for instance membership is subject to fees which members need to raise annually. Other professional organizations further require members to make application fees. Since membership requires active participation, members end up spending more money in breakfasts, transportation costs to venues4. The professional associations do not operate on principle of autonomy, implying in advocacy and policy issues, the profession may undertake a position which does not represents the position of members. The professional organizations, due to qualification to membership, may result into people that have diverse cultural, religious and political views which may not represent personal views of a member5.
Lifelong learning
Lifelong learning can be defined as an ongoing, self-motivated and voluntary pursuit of knowledge that any individual seeks with the aims of promoting personal or professional development. Lifelong learning is characterized by advantages like promoting social inclusion, active citizenship, individual personal and professional development and improvement of individual employability6. Student professional organizations promotes lifelong learning because engagement challenges individual beliefs and knowledge, individual gain opportunity to learn, get entertained, peer learning, widening of individual experience and knowledge on different cultures and languages, provides opportunities for members to work together and provide solutions to challenges affecting the profession or organization. A student may not promote lifelong learning if the organization lacks mentors and professional who could facilitate or act as facilitators for the student learning. Student of mathematics institution may fail to have mentors engaged with research and development which may limit opportunities for acquisition of new knowledge7. Student of mathematics institution promotes student learning through discussions and also opportunities for employers to access statisticians and data analysts through the mathematics organization.
Mission and objectives of American Evaluation Association
American Evaluation Association (AEA) is composed of international evaluators. AEA mission is built on application and exploration of program evaluation, personal evaluation, technology and different evaluations8. The mission of AEA is to improve evaluation practices and evaluation methods, increase utility of evaluations, and promote evaluation as independent profession. AEA mission is to support emerging contributions to development of evaluation with goals of generating new theories and knowledge that define promotion of effective human action. The objectives of AEA are to support goals for evaluation that are targeted at generation of theory and knowledge, identification of opportunities for improvement of evaluation practices and methods and improvement of utility of evaluation.
Promoting young professional engagement
If I was in charge of membership, I would encourage young professional involvement through free membership for young professionals or decreasing membership fees for the young professionals. I would advocate for sponsorship of participation of young professionals in seminars or workshops due to low income level or possible lack of employment and remove financial constraints which may exclude young professionals that have talent that can promote growth of the organization9. I would register the organization on social networks like FaceBook and linkedin in order to promote global participation. I would further increase quantity of community service projects which could not only promote grassroots or community learning but also promote social and economic development. I would advocate for increase in educational fairs to create awareness and promote young professional participation in presentations. I would further forge for monetary and non-monetary benefits associated with participation and further use the local members to create a local face on the organization and improve acceptance.
