Students' Forum Conference in Prague, October 2002, Funding Available

Dear friends,
The Students' Forum 2000 Conference together with the NGO Market will be
held under auspices of President Václav Havel on October 27 - 31, 2002 in
Prague and at the castle Vilemov, Czech Republic. It aims at bringing
together young people of different backgrounds from around the world and
providing them with the opportunity to participate in contemporary debates
on pressing issues related to global inequality and injustice with special
focus on democracy in the globalized world. During the operative and
outcome-oriented three-day conference participants shall among others seek
answers to the following questions:


1) How can equality of democratic participation be ensured?

2) Are there religious and cultural limitations on democratic participation
that should be recognized, or is democratic participation a universal value
that takes different shapes in different societies and cultures?

3) How should real and meaningful democratic participation in decisions
relating to the environment, resource allocation, development strategies and
cultural participation be achieved?

4) To what extent are groups such as the young, the aged, religious,
linguistic or ethnic minorities excluded from the usual mechanisms of
democracy?

5) Should democratic participation be ensured at all levels, from local
government to national and international levels? What would a "democratic"
international system look like?

6) At present, the majority of the global population is effectively excluded
from any participation in global policy-making: is this acceptable if
democracy is accepted as a key and fundamental universal value?


The topic of this year's conference will be "Citizenship and participation
in the globalizing world". Democratic participation by groups and
individuals in decision-making is regarded as a fundamental value of most
modern societies and cultures. However, there is often very little
consideration or critical analysis of what true "democratic participation"
involves and requires.


The NGO Market, an event aimed at non-governmental organizations and public,
will be held within the framework of the Students' Forum 2000 conference.
The NGO Market consists of three main activities: a fair, interactive
workshops and a round table discussions. It will be held in the Municipal
House in Prague.

Attached please find the Call for participation for the conference (deadline
for applications is August 28th 2002), invitation letter for the NGO market
(applications welcome till the end of August - see the return slip
attached). We would appreciate if you could forward this message to as many
people you can. The more applications we can from far and wide the greater
diversity and interesting debates we may eventually have.

Should you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us at
[email protected].

Best wishes,

Michaela Pavlisova and SF2000 team


Prague, July 2002










Conference

"Citizenship and participation in the globalising world"

26th - 31st October 2002
Vilemov Castle and Prague, Czech Republic






Conference Presentation and Outline

Application form






Conference

"Citizenship and participation in the globalising world"
Vilémov Castle and Prague, 26th - 31st October 2002



What is the Students' Forum 2000 Initiative?

Over the five years a conference series under the title Forum 2000 has been
held in the Prague Castle under the auspices of the President of the Czech
Republic, Václav Havel, and attended by an international group of high
profile figures, known for their human and civic commitments. This
conference series has the aim of reflecting on and discussing the issues
pressing for society at the beginning of the new Millennium.

In June 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001 the organisers of Forum 2000 organised
student conferences with similar aims. Following the success of the four
Students' Forum 2000 conferences, the Forum 2000 Foundation and its partners
have decided to hold a fifth event for young people and students. At the
same time, the Students' Forum 2000 initiative has developed considerably
since its inception. Student's Forum 2000 is now an initiative and network
comprised of an annual global conference followed by the Non-governmental
organizations' market (so-called NGO Market) and local grassroots activities
("Decentralized Activities") supported by a Long-term training course. By
considering the theory and practice of education and learning today, it aims
to explore issues of globalisation important to young people. We believe
that a process of ongoing dialogue and action is the key to young people
empowering themselves to tackle the social and political problems in their
environment.

The Students' Forum 2000 conference in 2002 will concentrate on the theme of
educating for participative democracy, citizenship and participation in the
globalising world. Around 45 young people and students, representing diverse
educational, professional, national, cultural, religious and life-style
backgrounds will be brought together at the Vilemov Castle, Czech republic,
to reflect on and discuss issues related to the theme of the conference.

The objectives of the conference are:

v To provide students and young people with the opportunity to both
contribute to and participate in contemporary debates on pressing issues
relevant to their lives;

v To improve the understanding of students and young people of the
relationship between changes and developments occasioned by globalisation
and contemporary education;

v To search for common perspectives and values for education across the
differences represented by participants;

v To represent the concerns of students and young people to the academic,
intellectual, political, cultural and professional communities regarding the
themes of the conference;

v To present the experiences of and to recruit decentralised activities, and
to create links within civil society;

v To involve a broad diversity and public of young people in the Students'
Forum 2000 debates;

v To further develop the Students' Forum 2000 network.

 Format and Structure of the Conference:

 The conference will be organised using different participative methods such
as workshops, panel discussions, working groups, keynote speeches, question
and answer sessions, round-tables, confrontation games and consensus
building exercises. Participants will mutually examine different issues
relating to the nature of the ongoing changes occasioned by globalisation,
with a particular emphasis on the implications of these issues for
citizenship and participation. Special emphasis will be given to the
exploration and identification of educating for democratic participation as
a tool for empowering citizens and giving them resources to engage at
different levels of decision-making processes in diverse networks,
environments and solidarities. The different perspectives represented by
participants from a variety of cultural, national, religious and life-style
backgrounds will ensure lively and rich debates at the conference.

 While the programme is still in development the following programme
elements have been identified:

 Keynote speech on Citizenship and participation
The keynote will shortly address the main theme of the conference
'Citizenship and Participation in a Globalising World' highlighting the
various degrees of participation by groups and individuals in civil society
and critically reflecting on what the true 'democratic participation'
involves and requires. The keynote speech will challenge the traditional
Western concepts of citizenship and parliamentary democracy and their
relevance in the globalising world, where individuals and groups may claim
membership of different structures, whether political, religious, ethnic or
cultural. Are there other forms of active participation by citizens in
decision-making, which in reality complement or offer real alternatives to
the traditional understanding of participative democracy? What rights of
participation should be recognised as belonging to individual or groups?
What conditions are necessary to allow real participation to exist?
The keynote speech will provide a basic framework for the overall debate of
the conference, the panel discussion and prepare grounds for more specific
discussions in the respective workshops.


Panel Discussion on the keynote speech
¨ A panel to address the issues and problems raised in the keynote speech
will be convened. Speakers on the panel will highlight controversies and
provide alternative views of the overall theme of the conference.

 High profile speakers, with expertise in the issues, are presently being
sought to give interventions at the conference.



 Thematic Workshops:

 Following the debate generated by the keynote speech and the panel
discussion, the central issue to be explored is how can equality of
democratic participation be meaningfully assured, especially in the contexts
that raise questions of complex particularity. Are there religious and
cultural limitations on democratic participation that should be recognised,
or is democratic participation a universal value that takes different shapes
in different societies and cultures? How should real and meaningful
participation in decisions relating to the environment, resource allocation,
development strategies and cultural participation be achieved?

 Five areas around the notion of citizenship can be identified, and these
characteristics correspond to the five dimensions active citizenship can
mean and bring about.
 In this context, education is often referred to as the 'solution', without
really assessing its possibilities and limitations. Basic education is still
a fragile global resource, which is often politically biased or misused. By
exploring education's capacity to contribute to the awareness raising of
democratic entitlements, as well as empowering groups and individuals in
participation in decision-making, educating for democratic participation is
a life-long process that empowers citizens, and gives them resources to
engage at different levels of participation and decision-making in diverse
networks and solidarities.
 This conference seeks to bring together this world of different world
possibilities, and to ask what organisations, institutions and individuals
can do to educate for meaningful participation in their contexts and beyond.

 The themes of the five workshops will be as follows:

1) Notion of Citizenship - Concepts of democratic participation usually
involve reference to notions of citizenship, yet a minimal observation is
that the category of citizen is not self-evident, often politicised, and
often the site of ideological struggle. Who is a 'citizen'? Are there
different types of citizenship available to the individual, for example at
local, group, national and international levels? Are there minimum
socio-economic conditions that an individual requires before they are able
to imagine their role as a citizen of a state or of a community? What is
necessary to create the conditions for meaningful citizenship? Does the
status of citizen involve responsibilities as well as rights? Has
globalisation eroded or enhanced traditional concepts of citizenship? Human
rights, ecology and development thinking all suggest a concept of 'world
citizenship', where a person's rights and responsibilities are bound up with
an interconnected view of human relationships that is not confined by
ethnicity, state, or other limiting factors. How can this world citizenship
be given effect?

2) Cultural Citizenship - 'Citizenship' involves more dimensions than just
the political. Contemporary debates often centre on the contentious notion
of cultural rights, based on the idea that focusing on individual liberty is
inadequate to uphold the rights of different groups and cultures. Do
indigenous peoples have rights with regard to the sanctity of their cultural
heritage? Do linguistic communities need rights to protect their
entitlements in an environment of globalised and deregulated media? What
happens when the cultural rights of some are seen by others as instrumental
in their marginalisation? Does talking about cultural rights weaken the
entire concept of human rights, and distract attention away from the
protection of basic individual rights?


3) Citizenship and the Environment - The exclusion of communities from
participating in key economic and environmental decisions is increasingly a
source of major friction in both the developed and developing world. What
degree of local participation is necessary for valid democratic
decision-making to take place? To what extent does the transnational nature
of environmental concerns require global participation in decision-making?
How can individuals and groups in less developed parts of the world acquire
an equal voice in the shaping of environmental policies? What is the
responsibility of nation states in relation to transnational enterprises
registered or active in their territories? Is the current move towards
self-regulation by corporations a move to protect themselves, or an
acknowledgement of the impossibility of policing disorganized capitalism?

4) Global Citizenship  - In an increasingly globalised world, traditional
concepts of national sovereignty and democratic participation based on
nation states are often outmoded. An increasing degree of key
decision-making now happens at the international level, in organisations
such as the IMF, WTO, the EU and the UN. A common perception is that these
institutions suffer from a lack of democratic legitimacy. How can this "
democratic deficit" be redressed? How can genuine equality of participation
in transnational decision-making be ensured? Is radical reform of the
international systems an impossibility? Over the last five years, the
meetings of a wider variety of international bodies have been met by
high-profile protests and counter-meetings. Is the 'anti-globalisation'
movement the embryo of a forum of global citizenry? If so, what issues,
internal and external, does it need to address?

5) Global Communications and the Public Sphere - Since at least the 1950s,
discussions of global development have involved debates over communications
and information, and this has been heightened by enormous inequalities in
the so-called Network Society. Participation in societal processes requires
access to sources of information, as well as opportunities to share opinions
and engage in meaningful political activity. To what extent does new
information and communications technology open up possibilities for
enhancing democratic participation? What possibilities do these technologies
open up for the developing world? To what extent are these new technologies
freed from state control and corporate monopolization? Conversely, does the
constant attention to the 'new' ignore the continuing importance of and
inequalities in 'old' forms of technology and communication?

 Applicants are requested to indicate interest in workshops (maximum 3 in
order of preference - see application forms attached). Participants will
participate in one workshop for the whole duration of the conference. The
final composition of the workshop groups will be dependent on interest,
number of participants, gender and geographical balance.

 Consensus Building
¨ The participants will have the possibility to develop consensus around the
issues of the conference within the context of the workshops in a
large-scale consensus building exercise. This exercise will develop the
ability of the workshops to synthesise their results and to present a
coherent report of conclusions and recommendations.


 Pre-Conference Dialogue and Preparation
¨ The participants will be encouraged to engage in a dialogue before the
conference. A couple of months in advance they will be sent pre-conference
material, including tentative workshops composition, e-mails of other
participants and suggested reading. A Students' Forum 2000 website will be
established in order for each workshop to began discussing its topic,
readings and various approaches and to facilitate the process of learning
each other among the participants and workshop facilitators.


 Date and Venue of the Conference:

 The conference will take place in Vilémov between the 27th and 29th
October, 2002. The conference itself will be followed by the
Non-governmental organisations' Market (so-called NGO market), a
presentation of both Czech and foreign NGO's, held in the Municipal House in
Prague between 30th and 31st October, 2002. Arrival will be expected on 26th
October and departure is foreseen on 1st November.


 Working languages:

 The working language of the conference will be English. All participants
must be able to work in English.

 Profile of participants:

 Applications are welcome from:
· Young people, members of youth organisations or NGO's with an interest in
the issue of globalisation and citizenship, human rights and participation
and possibly have some experience of working with such issues in the context
of their organisations;
· Students, with experience of student politics and/or an interest in the
issue of the theme of the conference;
· Young people working in national and international authorities which work
on the issues of the conference;
· Interested individuals with relevant experience in the issues debated.

 In all cases participants should be:
· Ready and able to attend for the full duration of the conference;
· Supported by an organisation, faculty - student body, authority or
network;
· Able to communicate and work in English;
· Between the ages of 18 and 30.

Participants will be selected on the basis of the quality of their
application form and on the basis of the following criteria:

1.  Geographical balance between north, south, east and west, and the
continents;
2.  Gender balance;
3.  Personal motivations for participation;
4.  Submission of a 2 page (maximum) position paper in answer to the
following question:

Young people's lives are being affected daily by globalisation. What, in
your opinion, makes active participation crucial in the globalising world
and what are the three main forms of participation current global education
should focus on?

5.  Experience of working on the issues of the conference;
6.  Cultural and religious diversity;
7.  Diversity of academic, professional and organisational backgrounds.

Travel costs, board and lodging

The costs of board and lodging, and internal transport costs will be covered
by the conference organisers.

In general, participants will cover the cost of their own travel to and from
Prague for the conference. However, financial support for travel costs can
be requested. In order to request financial support for travel costs,
participants should write a letter justifying their need, and the amount of
financial support requested and enclose it with their other application
materials. Requests for financial support from applicants resident in
developing countries, or countries at an extreme distance from Prague, will
be considered favourably when distributing financial support.  Applicants
are strongly encouraged to seek alternative sources of funding to cover
their travel costs.

The conditions for receiving reimbursement of travel costs are as follows:

1.  Full participation in the conference;
2.  Use of the most economical fare, or reduced rate fares where possible.

There will be a participation fee of USD 60 per participant. Participants
are encouraged to request their sending organisation, faculty, and authority
or network to cover the cost of this participation fee. Where a participant
cannot find an alternative source of funding for this fee, the conference
will waive it, on the basis of a request in advance of the conference
justifying need.


Candidates should send their application forms and position papers by
airmail to

Michaela Pavlisova
Students' Forum 2000 Coordinator
119 08 Praha - Hrad
Czech Republic
Web: www.sforum.net


or by fax or e-mail at the following co-ordinates:

Fax: +420-2-24310989
E-mail: [email protected]

Applicants are encouraged to send their applications by e-mail to facilitate
communication and to speed up the process of selection.


We must receive the applications no later than 28th  August 2002.

Approximately 40 international candidates will be invited to participate in
this conference from among the applications received by the deadline. Those
candidates accepted to participate will be informed in September 2002 and
will subsequently receive information by post, including a full programme
and other relevant details.

APPLICATION FORM
(Please type or write LEGIBLY in CAPITAL LETTERS)


Part I


Surname:       First Name:

Nationality:    Age:   Sex:


Address:




Telephone: Daytime:     Other:

Fax:      e-mail:

Organisation / Faculty - Student Body / Authority / Network:

Address:



Telephone:       Fax:


Is your organisation / faculty / authority part of an international network?
If yes, please specify:



Your position of responsibility in your organisation / faculty - student
body / authority / network:



Working Languages: (please mention ALL languages you can work in)

Language Very Good Good  Fair
English




Have you any special needs or requirements (e.g. dietary, disability, etc.)



Request for financial support for travel costs

Do you wish to receive financial support to cover your travel costs?

Yesÿ         No ÿ

If YES, please enclose a letter explaining and justifying your need for
financial support, stating the amount of your request in United States
Dollars. In addition, please enclose proof (quote from a travel agency) of
the cost of the ticket you wish to purchase, and state the percentage of
your entire travel costs this amount represents. Participants are strongly
encouraged to seek alternative sources of funding to cover their travel
costs.

Participation fee

Will you be in a position to pay the participation fee of USD 60?


Yesÿ         No ÿ

If NO, please enclose a letter explaining and justifying your need for the
participation fee to be waived. Applicants are strongly encouraged to
request that the sending organisation or an alternative funding source cover
this participation fee.

Assistance with Visa Procedures

If you are accepted to participate in this conference, will you require
assistance in obtaining a visa for the Czech Republic?

No  ÿ       Yes  ÿ


If yes, please indicate:

Date of Birth:   Passport Number:    Issued at (place):

on (date):    Date of expiry:


Date:       Signature:


Part II

1.  What is your experience concerning the theme of this conference?






















2.  What is the special interest of your organisation / faculty - student
body / authority in the theme of this conference? How can you personally/
possibly your organisation benefit from participating in this conference?













3.  What is your personal motivation for applying to participate in this
conference? How can you personally contribute to the event? Why do you think
it should be you not someone else to be selected for participation?
























4.  What do you expect to gain from participating in this conference? What
concretely do you think you can do with the experience/ knowledge/ contacts
gained at the conference? Are you planning on taking up any specific
activity/ project?














5.  Please indicate the workshops you are interested in (maximum 3, in order
of preference):

Workshop 1st Preference 2nd Preference 3rd Preference
1. Notion of Citizenship
2. Cultural citizenship
3. Citizenship and the Environment
4. Global citizenship
5.Global Communications and the Public sphere

6.  Any other comments?














Please return this application form and a 2 page (maximum) position paper on

Young people's lives are being affected daily by globalisation. What, in
your opinion, makes active participation crucial in the globalising world
and what are the three main forms of participation  current global education
should focus on?

to the following address, fax number or e-mail address at the latest by 28th
August 2002.


Michaela Pavlisova
Students' Forum 2000 Coordinator
119 08  Praha - Hrad
Czech Republic
Web: www.sforum.net

Fax: +420-2-24310989

E-mail: [email protected]



Please note that sending in the application form is not a confirmation of
acceptance to participate in the conference. Applicants accepted to
participate will be informed in September by the conference organisers.