Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Citizen Initiatives: El Faro

A collaborative effort: linking more than 220 organizations

When we started El Faro we knew that we did not want a fair of NGOs, “competing” between themselves in giving visitors information about their activities and convincing them to become a member.

The NGO part of El Faro decided to participate in Expo Zaragoza 2008 because we could reach a different audience, an audience that doesn't usually attend “NGO actitivities”.

We hope that the expected 6 million visitors of the Expo Zaragoza 2008 can obtain a strong and unified message; a message that will educate them about our work and inspire them to become involved. It has not been easy to develop the concept; the issues are broad—covering both social and environmental dimensions of water— but we have managed to put the fair together, a fair we believe will potentially make a difference, and we are proud of it!

Also, we believe that having the opportunity (and the budget!) to bring to our pavilion round tables several hundred experts during the Expo for three months will provide a space for further debate and contribute to our knowledge of water and sustainable development issues and solutions.

The Expo has facilitated this process by giving the civil society movements the space and the means, while leaving El Faro with complete independence to set the agenda, even if this agenda might be different from some of the governments participating at the Expo.

To organize ourselves at El Faro we have put together a Council, integrated by 27 organizations, in charge of approving the strategic lines of the Pavilion content and operations. For the day-to-day decisions we’ve created a Permanent Commission, integrated by seven organisations: Intermon Oxfam, Red Cross, New Culture of Water, Engineers without Borders, Sustain Labour International, WWF-Adena and Ecology and Development (the latter working as the Secretariat).

The organizations participating at El Faro hope the results of the discussions held at the Encounters space will form input to and if possible articulate with other ongoing international processes, a key one of these being the CSD.

Over the next two weeks, we will be outlining the issues that will be covered at El Faro in Outreach Issues hoping to find connections to the debates that will take place at this CSD session.