Dear Friends, Dear Civil Society Activists,
It is with great pleasure that I’m inviting
you to participate in the 2012 CIVICUS World Assembly that will take place from 3 to 7 September
2012 in Montreal, Canada. As a CIVICUS Board member, I’m delighted
to offer you the special Early Bird discount
rate which has been extended until 15 August.
Your participation in this year’s Assembly would
be particularly important, as the 2012 Assembly will see the launch of a comprehensive,
multi-stakeholder process, led by CIVICUS, on defining a new social contract,
that will culminate in the presentation of recommendations to the United
Nations in 2015. The 2012 World Assembly participants will set the guiding
principles of this process, so your voice really can count!
In
addition, the 2012 World Assembly, the 12th such event, promises an
extraordinary variety of cutting-edge debate and encounters. The World
Assembly programme offers 43 activity sessions from 5 to 7 September, while
from 3 to 4 September, the Youth Assembly welcomes all participants
under the age of 30 for 10 additional sessions.
And in addition to
these sessions and the networking opportunities at our Citizen Café, the
plenary discussions will also bring many powerful insights to the
proceedings from the local, national and global levels. From Marina
Silva, social leader and former Minister of Environment in Brazil, to Daniel Ben-Horin, Founder and CEO of
TechSoup, and from Olav Kjørven,
Assistant Secretary General for development policy at UNDP to Caroline Anstey, Managing Director at
the World Bank, our ground-breaking keynote speakers will join inspirational
participants from across the board, including policy-makers, government
decision-makers, donors, civil society leaders, activists, academics, artists,
bloggers and many, many more.
I invite you to
find out more about the full programme on the
World Assembly website, and to view the thematic
videos and to check the brochure for further information.
The World Assembly comes at a
pivotal moment for citizens to redefine the relationships and conditions we
want for a sustainable future in a changing and volatile world. But even
ahead of Montreal, we want to start the process of defining a new social
contract now. So I also
invite you now to submit your key pieces of research, analysis, commentary and
other essential documents that can help inform our upcoming discussions. We
will then make them available to all World Assembly participants to feed into
our reflection! Find out more here
.
I look forward to welcoming you in Montreal in
September. Drop me a line if you saw this here and are going to join us...
Best wishes,
Uygar - on environment and civil society I should have said :)