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Minutes from the first part of the PGA meeting
Sunday 3rd July 2005, Teviot Building, Edinburgh

  1. General overview of the current situation within PGA network
  2. Global PGA conference in India in October 2005
  3. Contents of the conference -- preparation and interlinkage
  4. PGA internal matters
  5. Fund-raising for Southern participation
  6. Caracol Methodlogy

1. General overview of the current situation within PGA network

2. Global PGA conference in India in October 2005

3. Contents of the conference -- preparation and interlinkage

Everyone in the meeting agreed on the need to make sure that the conference does *not* consist of a series of disconnected workshops on different topics. We hope to be able, collectively, to prepare more creative and interesting exchanges than the sort of market/fair of struggles presenting themselves one after another and competing for attention (which we referred to as the "social forum model", that everyone thinks is extremely limited).

We strongly propose to have a collective inter-continental preparatory process for the contents of the conference, with the aim of making sure that all the conference topics are previously discussed with a particular emphasis on the interconnection between the struggles.

We of course hope that all participants will bring into the conference the input and experience of their particular struggles, which will surely be related to a wide range of issues (such as gender, food sovereignity, militarism, energy, racism, etc). But we propose that everyone thinks (and if possible also writes) before the conference:

The point of asking all these questions is to try to collectively find, during the conference, ways to deepen the existing(rather superficial) networking and convergence between different struggles in different parts of the world. We think that a conference on the "social forum model" would only strengthen this superficiality, and it would be a very bad for the future of the PGA process.

There was a suggestion to structure the programme — See the section Caracol Methodology at the end of the Minutes (it relates to the methodological proposal for structuration of the Caracol Intergalactica space within the Youthcamp of the last WSF in Porto Alegre in January 2005).

Finally, a question was raised about welcome and introduction of the conference and the participants. Right now it is not in the proposed programme structure sent by the Indian movements, according to which we start on the 5th directly with gender workshops. We hope that there will be some time to introduce ourselves when we start.

4. PGA internal matters

The final 2 days of the conference will be devoted to PGA internal stuff. We had a brainstorming about which topics need discussion, so that this discussion can be collectively prepared before we get there. We realise that many of these issues might be different in each region, and the priorities might also be different, but that is part of the discussion.

5. Fund-raising for Southern participation

We *VERY STRONGLY* suggest that all Western European and North American participants go as far as they can in paying the fare for a Southern delegate.

We propose to the North Americans to take over funding the travel costs for Latin American participants, and also contribute (if they can) to the travel costs of participants from other regions.

For participants from Europe, we suggest that we set ourselves a minimum aim of funding, at least, the travel costs for 5 people from Africa, 5 from the Middle East, 5 from Eastern Europe, and 5 from East and South-East Asia. (We understand that South Asian participants will travel overland, which is quite cheap and would not need funding from abroad.) Besides that, if the Latin American participants have a regional preparatory meeting, we suggest to aim at contributing at least 2000 euros to that. All together, this is likely to amount to a total of around 15000-20000 euros to be raised in Europe. Of course, it would be much better if there would be more funding (meaning also more participants), we are proposing this as a minimum.

There was the idea of trying to divide this amount between the different groups coming from Western Europe, and ask people to organise themselves (organising fund-raising parties, asking local fund-raising sources, etc) to get the money together. Conventional fund-raising sources are rather reluctant to fund PGA, but there might be the possibility to get some money from unions, more-or-less radical NGOs or foundations, etc.

We will also ask the Indymedia network to help spread the call for donations for the PGA conference.

We propose to continue the discussion on all these ideas in the globalaction and caravan99 discussion lists.

6. Caracol Methodlogy

Pre-conference:

As the organisations register for the conference, they provide information on the activities they want to propose. This is essentially the data that will be used to merge activities. There must be a facilitating group that goes through the proposals and works out the possible connections between them. It's better to only try to work out a way of grouping after having read them all, instead of before, as there might be more than one way of doing it (and starting from one could possibly prevent the others from being considered). If the intention is to create networks and facilitate common campaigns and projects, the best thing is to focus on the issue or area that the organisations work on (depending on how diverse they are, it's also important to pay attention to differences in profile).

(Even if not all proposals for activities are produced in writing and following a particular format, the facilitating group must keep track of all of those who come in — someone would have to anyway, for the programme to be produced!)

After the grouping for the first day has been done, the facilitating group should go through the proposals again to develop a 'mind map' of the possible connections. This is helpful for two reasons: to have a first idea of the possibilities that exist for the second day; and to try and already put some groups in contact with others.

First day:

Two sessions (morning and first half of the afternoon) where groups working on similar issues/areas/campaigns get together, present their work, discuss the similarities/differences, exchange ideas and experiences etc. If possible, they should produce charts etc. that can be presented to the other groups.

One session (second half of the afternoon) where there's a report back from the two sessions of the day, and based on it people collectively try to work out what the overlaps are, and how the sessions can be grouped for the following day. If there's a lot of difficulty in doing that, the facilitating group might present the 'mind map' prepared previously; but that shouldn't be necessary.

Second day:

Two 'overlap' sessions among groups who decided the previous day to have sessions together. The stress should be on how their campaigns can be related, how skills can be shared among them, how they can concretely contribute to each other's work etc. At the end of the day, another report back session where groups present what has come up in their meetings, and everyone can make suggestions and proposals. If necessary, another session could be scheduled for another day to continue the discussion, as well as smaller meetings among groups who have decided to work together.

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