PROVISIONAL RECORD FORUM FOR THE CROSS-EVALUATION OF PROPOSALS FOR A RESPONSIBLE, UNITED AND PLURAL WORLD

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INTRODUCTION

Before summer 2002, the team of Nova, Barcelona Centre for Social Innova-tion, presented the Call for FPH Initiatives with the proposal to undertake a collective process of reading and cross-evaluation of the “Proposal Papers” and the “Breakthroughs” published in 2001 in order to consensually produce a synthesis. The knowledge and evaluation of the proposals undertaken to date by the Allies would be fundamental for the new stage and for introduc-ing it to other alliances and forums such as the Social Forums –World and European– or that of Barcelona 2004.

To provide around 3,000 Allies with the reading and evaluation of some 60 texts, with more than 1,000 proposals on the most varied issues, in 5 lan-guages and at a low cost, a fairly unusual system of forums via Internet was necessary. We suggested testing the “Delibera®” system so that the Allies could participate in this process through their evaluations, comments and contributions.

In October 2002, we started the weekly publication of a Proposal Text, pre-sented in the format of a “Delibera Questionnaire” available on the website or by e-mail and in 5 languages.

The project sought to evaluate the proposals of almost 60 texts published on the website of the Alliance (“Papers” and “Breakthroughs”) in order to move towards a synthesis based on these evaluations. After 9 months and 35 texts submitted for evaluation, the FPH asked us to stop in order to under-take an evaluation of the forum and a provisional synthesis with the evalua-tions of the texts published between October 2002 and July 2003.

The 22 texts that remain to be evaluated, and which we hope we can proc-ess in the near future, are the following:

4 Papers of the Humanity and Biosphere Pole
Energy – Time and Sustainable Development – Soil Reform – Forests.

9 Papers of the Governance and Citizenship Pole
Social Leaders in the 21st Century: Challenges and Proposals – The Military – Arms Industry Conversion – Local Authorities – Fisherfolk – Farmers – Governance: Common Principles – Rights and Governance – Urban Violence.

4 Papers of the Socio-Economy of Solidarity Pole
International Trade – Trade Union Movement – Health – Tourism.

5 Papers of the Values, Culture, Art, Education and Society Pole
New Information and Communication Technologies – Humanity – Women – Inter-religious – Media/Journalists.

There also remained 2 “Breakthroughs” without Paper:
On Business Leaders and Executives about the Practice of Company Respon-sibilities – On Responsible Shareholders

Next we present the provisional record with the data on participation and the publication of texts.

It has been a pleasure to participate in this methodological adventure to promote and facilitate the evaluation of the Alliance proposals and especially if the results enable its members in this new stage and enrich other fields such as the Social Forums.

We are convinced that one of the factors for the non participation of many of the “historical” Allies, heads of workshops, writers of “Papers” and members of the FPH, among others, has been the lack of motivation due both to the sabbatical year of the FPH and the lack of perspectives of the Alliance. A participatory process of these characteristics, with such complexity, richness and innovation –both in contents and in methodology– needs important in-centives for it to be appropriate to those potentially interested. An incentive could have been for the results to have been presented in a determined area (e.g., the World Social Forum) and for those who had the greatest and best participation to have had the opportunity to meet in order to perfect and present a final synthesis.

Another challenge arising from this forum –and which could be another in-centive for participation– is that of the collective production of alternative world models to globalisation. For the first time, a reflection process has been introduced into the Alliance on the possible and necessary articulation of proposals which until now were only thematic or sectorial.

As we have announced, before continuing with the process of evaluation and synthesis, the FPH considers it necessary to evaluate the process undertaken until now. We need to know your opinion about the evaluation and synthesis process of the proposals through the “Delibera” system. To this end, we have created a new multilingual forum http://evalua.delibera.info/FR/ with 3 questionnaires in which you can state your view on this first evalua-tion stage. Please express your opinion before 20th October 2003.

Thank you for your participation.

Team for the promotion of the Forum:
Nova, Centre for Social Innovation
http://www.novacis.org
http://www.delibera.info

Barcelona, October 2003