Interactive and Participatory
The sessions are designed around the three questions in the call for the Encounters: Who? How? Where to? We aim at answering these questions together, rather than presenting ready-made answers.
We trust that you have watched enough webinars in the last years. So we will have only interactive workshops where everyone is actively engaged in the discussion, rather than panels.
We will still have some special guests from the organizations facilitating the workshops. We appreciate to hear their experience and discuss with them.
We will have three parallel sessions happening at the same time. (Check the program.)
In-between each slot of parallel sessions, we will have plenaries. These are moments for us to hear from the sessions, find the connections, integrate them into the larger conversation, and feed in to the next sessions. Plenaries will play a crucial role for us to reach collective conclusions.
We see the Encounters as one single discussion that lasts two and a half days. You are welcome to participate in any part of it, although for a coherent understanding we encourage you to participate in the entire event, from the opening plenary until the closing plenary.
The program is designed to have a lot of long breaks between the sessions. We invite you to continue the discussions outside of the session rooms, or open completely new conversations. The Encounters are meant for us to encounter each other and create actual connections among activists.
There may be topics you would like to discuss with others but is not included in the program. Or perhaps new questions will rise during the sessions. We welcome such proposals in the Open Slot, a two-hour time-slot for which the content is not predefined.
Inclusive
The Encounters will be in real life, in Liceu Camões in Lisbon, Portugal.
We have big challenges in terms of inclusion. With our limited capacities, we are trying to do our best to overcome or mitigate those challenges. Please help us create an inclusive space that welcomes diversity.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is the border restrictions in the European Union. After blocking free access to vaccine technologies and after administering third shots while the majority of the world did not even receive their first dose, European imperialism now limits entry to specific monopolistic vaccine brands. The current situation implies that we would have very limited participation from the Global South in the Ecosocialist Encounters. After a process of consultation and consensus decision-making, we agreed to have one time slot that is entirely online, with three parallel sessions, hosted and led by the activists from the Global South. (Check the program.) We are still working out the logistics of how to make the online-offline interaction work without creating frustrations due to technical issues.
We will have webinars in the run up to the Encounters in order to receive input from a global perspective. (Check the Events page.)
Increasing online participation does not necessarily increase inclusion, particularly where the electricity and internet infrastructures are not reliable. We decided to give financial support to the grassroots groups from the Global South that are involved in the sessions to improve the internet connection capacity. This support is very limited and rather symbolic because we don’t have a lot of funds. (Check the budget page in Open Collective.)
For those who can cross the borders, travel and accommodation costs are a serious constraint. We are supporting activists from dozens of countries to be here with us in Lisbon. This support is very limited because we don’t have a lot of funds. (Check the budget page in Open Collective.) For accommodation, we rely on comrade accommodation, that means people offering rooms, beds and sofas in their houses for the participants.
Furthermore, for those who will be with us, language will be another challenge for inclusion. We are desperately looking for volunteer simultaneous translators as well as people who could help us with technical support.
Last but not least, we will have a small awareness team to make sure of everyone’s well-being throughout the Encounters.
Help us organize
There are two immediate things you can do to help us organize the Encounters.
The first is to register and get your friends to register. The prepayments for the food will close soon because the kitchen team will have to prepare a budget and order ingredients. (Register here: https://www.alterecosoc.org/5th-international-ecosocialist-encounters/registration/ )
The second is that you can join the preparations. Here’s an online form for volunteers: https://framaforms.org/encontros-ecossocialistas-2022-inscricao-para-voluntarios-1639668033