Jesuits in Social Action (JESA) in collaboration with Social Justice Secretariat (SJS) Rome and the Social Apostolate Coordinators of Africa & Madagascar and East Asia & Oceania Conferences with the partnership of Alboan, Spain is organizing an International Workshop on "Jesuit Advocacy: Better Governance of Natural Resources" from February 13 - 23, 2010 at XISS, Ranchi. Around 25 participants from the three Conferences are expected to participate in it.
OBJECTIVES:
1. To look at the major challenges that the poor and vulnerable are facing today in our conferences with regards to the lack of good governance and depletion of natural resources.
2. To share our efforts and interventions and diagnose our overall SJ involvement and approaches to GNR.
3. To understand the major challenges that the poor and vulnerable are facing today at a global level and the most significant international advocacy approaches stepping ahead in GNR.
4. To start building a definition of good GNR and identify strategies, mechanisms and concrete action plans at various levels, inspired by Ignatian values.
METHODOLOGY:
Part I: (Feb. 14 – 16):
The first 3 days will be spent more on a) learning from each other based on the 3 in depth case study presentations from the 3 Conferences and identifying the common thread running across them; b) looking at global challenges faced by the poor and vulnerable and understanding what is being done at the international level through various global institutions, networking organizations and movements. The questions that will guide us may be: Where are we as Jesuits in these types of advocacy networks? Are there anything that we can learn from our own interventions and global networks? What are the opportunities and challenges before us?
Resource persons will provide us some input and guide our initial discussion to start building our own definition of good GNR.
Part II: (Feb. 17 – 18):
Based on the first 3 days of reflection and sharing, the participants (only the inner circle) will move towards preparing a concrete plan of action. They will prepare proposals for Advocacy Networks on Governance of Natural Resources at various levels with clear tasks and commitments.
PARTICIPANTS:
There will be 2 levels of participants in this workshop:
a) The main 25 participants who will form the inner circle that will comprise of delegates chosen by the 3 conferences who will continue with the second part and the exposure visits.
b) Another 15 participants who will form the outer circle, who will only participate in the first part. They will be from various Jesuit Social Centres and other institutions that are involved in GNR.
THE DETAILED PLAN FOR THE DAYS:
Day I Objectives 1 & 2: SJ Interventions and Reflections: There will be 3 concrete Case Presentations by the 3 Conferences based on the guidelines and questionnaire given (Annexure I) followed by general mapping of the overall involvement of Jesuits in these 3 conferences.
Day II Objectives 1 & 2: Through Two presentations (1 by the Steering Committee and another by the International Resource Persons) followed by group work and clarifications on the major aspects of governance and natural resources and our priority groups. This will help the participants to become clear of the topic for further reflection on the theme. The 2 presentations will be a) to further clarify and understand the concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘natural resources’ based on our case study presentations and b) to understand the global reality of how the depletion of natural resources by the rich affect the poor and the vulnerable especially in the developing nations.
Day III Objective 3: International Advocacy Interventions: The three conferences will highlight the two or three significant international advocacy interventions that are going on in their countries or within their Conference nations in favour of good GNR through a participating delegate from the conference. They will highlight not the issues where the Jesuits are involved in but the issues where civil society groups and organizations are engaged in international advocacy works. The persons will need to prepare a paper well in advance on this so that the paper can also be circulated to all. The Resource Persons invited by the Steering Committee will highlight the Global Networks that are taking place on some of the major issues GNR at the Global level by the International Institutions and organizations.
Day IV-V Objective 4: Laying foundation for good governance, inspired by Ignatian Values, reaching agreements and developing action plans: The dynamics of this second part of the workshop will be as follows: (a) Feedback by two persons from the pool of Resource Persons and from the steering committee. The feedback will take the form of specifying the strategic themes or areas where a proposal and/or decisions need to be taken. (b) Preparation of well-formulated proposals by small groups. (c) Presentation of the proposals to the Plenary, discussion and approval. The groups will prepare 3-4 major common working proposals for our collective reflection and action. The groups will prepare proposals with clear strategies, mechanisms and action plans at various levels, national and international.
Download the Program Schedule
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