• cause the global process has been more or less in standby since cochabamba (sept01)
• cause the timing seems quite good (one month after g8 in evian, 7 months before wsf in india)
• cause there'll be a space for skill sharing and creation on communication for social change at that time - good both for the convenors (pga's communication tools have a great improvement potential) and for people who want to do support work (which is about communicating) - more info about it in the appendix
• cause we can get quite good facilities to hold the whole thing in pola de lena (rural asturias, nw spain)
• cause noone knows yet whatever happened with the idea of global campaigns that was decided in cochabamba, there's little exchange about the process in different continents, and now that the post-s11 hic-ups are over it would be a good idea to do something to revitalise the global process
• cause there's a serious lack of info about how the support work works, the best way to solve it seems to be well-prepared intros into what has been done so far and how, and it'd be really great to do that with the convenors around

where?

we can get good facilities in pola de lena, 2,5 km away from where escanda is located. we will get a school with space and mattresses for up to 350 people for the skill sharing on communication, and can also use several other buildings and facilities for free. if the convenors want, we can get free access to a quiet place (another smaller school about 6 km away from the other) for the meeting, close enough to pola to interact with the communication meeting, and far enough to have a bit of peace of mind... we can have the intros to support work in pola de lena.

who?

besides the european convenors (whoever they are at the time), we suggest to invite one person from:

current convenors:

• CONFEUNASSC (peasant movement ecuador)
• mov. Juventud Kuna (kuna youth indigenous mov. panama)
• aoteoroa educators (aoteoroa/new zealand; outreach tool of maori movement)
• krishok federation (landless peasants bangladesh)
• rainbow keepers (radical green anarchist network eurasia)
• clac (anticapitalist convergence canada)
• either PCN (colombia) or ONECA/ODECO (honduras) [ONECA/ODECO, the org of the garifuna in honduras, is officially the org of black communities of latin america in the convenors committee, but it has not been very active in the process, and PCN has been the afroamerican organisation that has normally taken ONECA/ODECO's role when they were not there - we would suggest to let them sort out themselves which afroamerican org should come]
• maybe FNT (sandinista union nicaragua) - they have also not been very active...

indian movements (ex-convenors very involved with pga, represent the largest networks of genuinely grassroots movements of the country, and happen to have issues with the wsf process):

• krrs (karnataka farmers mov - as link with all other farmer organisations)
• national alliance of peoples' movements (comprising different movements such as several landless peasant movements also the one that organised the asian equivalent of the hub during the asian social forum in january, narmada bachao andolan, national fishworkers forum, etc)

african movement (no african convenors, african conference hasn't happened yet):

• anti-privatisation forum or soweto electricity committee (south africa; active in anti-WSSD protests; they were in cochabamba and are probably the most interesting contact pga ever had in southern africa)

money?

the food and accommodation costs are negligible, we in escanda can deal with them, and have excellent chances to get all the visas. the problem, as always, is the tickets. we hope that the canadians sort out their own ticket (and hopefully at least one for one of the southern orgs) and that the maori ticket can be dealt with by people from the pacific pga network. if that works, we'd be talking about 2-4 for latin america, 1-3 for asia (3 if people think that it's a good idea to talk about what to do about wsf with the indian movs.) and 1 from africa - between 4 and 8 tickets altogether (around 5.000-6.000 €). hopefully several groups can put some money for the tickets, especially if they get a visit (which they'd also have to pay) after the g8 mobilisation.

how?

we'd find it lovely if this idea could be presented in dijon on saturday and discussed on sunday, so that if people have questions they can get back to us (+34 651 922 443, apologies 4 not being there, busy time now!!). if the dijon meeting likes the idea, we would then present it to the convenors asking for feedback. If they like it, we'd put out a call to the complete network with 2 purposes: encouraging all collectives that want to be part of the global dimension of pga to participate in the intros, and asking everyone to try to contribute to the travel costs of southern convenors. if people think that this meeting / intros are a good idea, hopefully the networks are strong enough to be able to get together decentralised funding for it. we can ask convenors if they'd like to come to the anti-g8 protests and visit some of the groups that pay their travel costs in june, in case people want to do local activities with the convenors they (co-)invite. of course, we'd love all people who are / have been involved in support work to be involved in designing and doing the intros.