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Who we are?
Abstract: Thank you for joining this forum on establishing a World Parliament. Here you can find some information about the WP21 team, some instructions for your first message: an introduction of yourself, and some explanation about the messages to come in the next few days, about participating in the e-forum and regarding the forum rules, guidelines, agenda, and archives..
Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us in this most important discussion about establishing a World Parliament for the 21st century. We ask that your first message be to introduce yourself. Please save your more specific comments for your following messages. You don't have to introduce yourself right away, but you will have to do so before you send your first contribution, which can be any time between now and the end of April 2003. A general information of the forum is found in http://allies.alliance21.org/wp/en/for/for.html. The archives of sent messages and reference materials will be posted at http://allies.alliance21.org/wp/en/disc/disc.html and http://allies.alliance21.org/wp/en/doc/doc.html. Finally, you can participate in the discussion by sending messages to: world-parl@forums.alliance21.org.
We will be using machine translation, which is not always perfect, but in time you are likely to get used to it. While it can sometimes be hard to understand and can occasionally cause misunderstandings, it does give us the opportunity to talk with many people that we would not otherwise be able to. We are inviting hundreds of people and many organizations to participate in this e-forum. If it is slow in getting started it is only because we have had so much to do to prepare for the forum and were later than we wanted in terms of sending out invitations.
This is your forum: it is here so that you can share your thoughts, your knowledge, your experience and your ideas. The Forum Coordination is here primarily to assist you in this. However, we will also be participating in the discussion as we are all committed to the realization of a world parliament and a responsible global governance.
Your first message: introducing yourself
Please make sure that you read the rules about drafting and composing messages and participating in the e-forum before sending your introductory message. Your message should tell us about yourself (interests, life, background) and anything that you think is important for us to know in regards to your participation in the e-forum in general. You could also tell us why you are participating, what you are expecting from the e-forum, and your vision of a world that the World Parliament could help to bring about.
Who we are
There are three primary facilitators and coordinators for the list serve and several other support people including Marina Urquidi, Kimberley Bliss, Juliette Decoster, and Gustavo Marin.
Rob Wheeler will be introducing and guiding the discussion. Arnaud Blin is responsible for the summaries and syntheses; and Germà Pelayo is handling the translations and other technical aspects. We are all working on the introductory papers and the agenda for the e-forum.
Rob Wheeler, 52, is American. He has represented a number of organizations at the United Nations over the past five years, including the International Institute for Sustainable Future and the Association of World Citizens. Rob is the Coordinator of the Global Peoples Assembly Network, North American Representative on the Steering Committee of the World Civil Society Forum, and has participated in the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural, and United World since 1997.
Arnaud Blin, 41, is French and American. He specializes in war and peace, democracy, and American politics. Here, he will be a godsend for those of you who are very busy, as his job will be to produce an analytical summary of all your contributions once a week, as well as once a month.
Germà Pelayo, 34, is Catalan, living in Paris. Geographer, formerly working in the Project Rethinking Society (http://www.novacis.org/novacis/eng/repensar.htm) and at the present moment developing also a website on the topic of refunding UN (http://site.voila.fr/globaldemocracy/en/home.html)
The documents that we will send in the next few days
You will be receiving the following documents in the next few days; and they will also be archived on the website. Please make use of them so that we can make the most of this opportunity through the e-forum.
a) The forum rules (already sent to the first subscribed participants): please read these carefully, both the overview and the more specific messages on translation, technical issues, and guidelines for participating.
b) A message about the context and the background of the proposal for a World Parliament.
c) The calendar and agenda for the next six months. This will include information about each month's topic, when each new topic will begin, and the use of coffee breaks.
d) A list of Reference Documents. This will include both Discussion Reference Materials and Complementary Materials dealing with issues of global governance, democracy, and the world parliament in general. Discussion Reference Materials will be posted in English, French and probably also in Spanish, while unfortunately most of Complementary materials will be only in English; however we will be happy to post them in other languages if people can locate them for us or will volunteer to translate them.
The Discussion Reference Materials will be posted at http://allies.alliance21.org/wp/en/doc/doc.html.
This Forum would not be possible without the support of the the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, for which we are most grateful. Thank you for your participation; please let us know if you have any questions or problems, by writing us to wp@alliance21.org
Rob Wheeler, Facilitator for the WP21
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