ex—convenors that take care of technical support, secretariat, finances,mailing lists administration,organization of the conferences.

never formally implemented at the conferences, in Bangalore it was stating the existance , but it only consists in northern people. It needs more decentralization and people from the south (ex :PGA Asia is putting up their own website). In Europe there is a mailing list: caravan99, that has probably to become biolingual.

In Bolivia the support group called for more people to help. For Bolivia the effort was concentrated to get financial support for the people from the South. There is plans to put a data base on the website.

There has been the idea to have regular bulletins, problems with languages and centralization

Subscribe the new conveniers to the conveniers list . For Bolivia was used a list, but this has to change and have access to a transparent and open database.

The PGA mail had lots of virus...a deliberate attak at the server and at mainly the caravan list, specially during the G8.

The part of the website in french and spanish is catastrofic. Idea of redifining PGA tasks on paper.

The PGA has to be run by local groups and not from above for the website , so for ex local groups can post the report of their own local actions to help the support group to collect them. Without using the internet?

The caravan list can be a good tool if there was more debate on it and theoretical discussion.

Officially should only exist in the way of ex convenors supporting current convenors. SG. Organised meeting in May 98 for convenors committee. This is where it got quite undefined in terms of membership. Sep 98 next convenors committee organised by sg decision on second conference in India. SG. organised tickets, visas etc. Next meeting in Prague sep 99, approved of regional proposal from L-America to have Cochabamba conf. March 2000 was regional conf of S-A in Nicaragua. After first Latin-A convenor (EZLN) next two convenors did not convene, Nicaraguan organisation 'kind of' became L-A s.g. There is a sg. for Asia that contains people from A'dam, England etc. RTS PGA group also does support work.

People in sg. present how their personal involvement came.

• In Prague there was discussion to dissolve the group by the convenors, but finally legitimised the sg. for their logistic support.
• In Prague their were one or two meetings that were just convenors. SG. was allowed to give political opinions but not allowed to take part in the decision making process.
• The exconvenors are asked to participate. Some (eg. RTS, ECN) are very active, others abandoned the process.
• There's been discussion on the role of the sg. since the beginning.
• At meetings/conferences often because of the dynamics big plans are made that tend not to be executed (but some have)
• Often projects start from within the network but get their own dynamics (eg. Indymedia from j18/Seatte)
• There is a gap between the organisational principles and the reality. Reality needs to be adjusted to the principles.
• Experience for the sg. member requirements are in practice: languages, cultural flexibility, money. There needs to be a relation of trust. So there has been an information hierarchy. Composition is for a large part based on personal contacts (that can also develop from the work).
• There is the global process, there is the European process — SG is in fact doing both.
• SG does a lot of work in 'pestering' the convenors to do things they are supposed to do.

On the influence of the SG and suggestions for improvements

• Does the SG have an ideas from what they want for the next conference, or the future in general.
• On the example of Plan Colombia, a lot of people involved in the project are also in the SG. So in this way the SG can have a lot of influence on the choice of issues and tactics.
• If the SG has people involved from different issues & backgrounds, this problem will be less great.
• The SG should make/publicise very clear what they are doing & especially also what need to be done to create transparency.
• Create a structure for longer skill exchanges (eg. language skills).
• Share administration of the lists (make membership lists of the e-lists available)
• Create a way to bring people in to the group. But this has the danger of creating a new organisation, this is not supposed to be PGA. PGA should be a space and process, there can be structure necessary to communicate.
• Suggestion to work in the support work in a way that groups commit to certain tasks in stead of individuals (eg. Estruiedas group, Geneva group, RTS, EYFA).
• Different groups seem to have created international workinggroups (MRG, RTS, Eurodusnie Workingroup). It can then be individuals from these groups that execute the support work.
• Seperate list for support and logistics

Global vs European support work

How can we make decisions about support work that is intercontinental. We can create/define the structure for logistic/support work in Europe. Intercontinental work done in Europe can fall into this.

There is some confusion. The core task for the SG is to support the logistics for the conferences & convenors committee meetings, and to facilitate the communication between the convenors (in terms of language etc).

PGA Europe Convenors Meeting, Barcelona | PGA Europe | PGA