Pierre Calame, director of the Foundation Charles Léopold Mayer for the Progress of Humankind (FPH) reminds us of the specificity of the collegial dimension of the Alliance. He describes its efforts and past difficulties, and insists on the importance of developing the collegial dimension as part of the framework of Assembly 2000-2001.

A businessman from Bangalore, India, works on the development of Internet trading. Is he more like his Californian counterpart, or like a government executive from his own country? Does a farmer from Uruguay look at matters concerning globalisation in a manner more similar to that of a farmer from Senegal, or to that of a high commissioner in his own country? Asking ourselves these questions is, in itself, a partial answer.

Long before the Alliance existed, we had become aware of the need to simultaneously consider the unity of the world, and the diversity of situations, and the diversity (or, rather, diversities), of geo-cultural contexts, social and professional contexts and challenges. That's why, ever since we began, it was decided that the Alliance had to be built upon three converging paths: geo-cultural, collegial, and thematic.

The collegial path is perhaps the most important of the three, but it is also the most difficult to develop. For this reason, as early as 1996, when the Foundation specified its priorities in support of the Alliance, it put forward two objectives: the collegial diversity of the Alliance, and celebration of a World Assembly. Budgetary decisions made by the Foundation's Council in January and April 2000 again showed this determination, translating it into financial commitments.

To mark the importance of this dimension, I had even thought of proposing that the choice of participants in the World Assembly of December 2001 should be made according to their collegial participation. Indeed, if the Alliance was reduced to an NGO coalition, we would only duplicate efforts of movements such as ATTAC, or those expressing themselves in Seattle, New York City, Washington D.C. or Prague. Thus, in proposals for action by members of the Alliance Facilitation Team concerning participants in the Continental Assemblies, thematic meetings, and especially in the World Assembly, the concern regarding collegial diversity should, in my opinion, be a priority.

Difficulties in developing the collegial path

However, the collegial path was much slower, as compared with the other two paths. This was due to two reasons:

• Difficulties in mobilising allies of a great diversity of contexts: It is easier to invite a French academic or Brazilian NGO leader to sign the platform than a Chinese mayor or a Swiss banker-not because they don't raise the same questions that we do, but because their way of working doesn't involve signing platforms.

• Many allies have had difficulty making a methodological distinction between a college and a thematic workshop. A college? It is a point of view, the way a social or professional group (women, young people, business leaders, local elected representatives, unionists, scientists, etc.) see the world, its future, and mutations that take place according to priority. A Thematic Workshop would regroup people from various socioprofessional contexts around a shared concern, such as education, urban government, science, technology, energy, etc. First, it is the way one medium sees the world; second, it is the way different media see the same issue.

However, socioprofessional universes are relatively compartmentalised, and we tend to reduce the point of view of each medium down to a professional environment: scientists think about science, journalists think about communications media, etc.

Developing the Alliance's Collegial Dimensions

Since some time ago, FPH facilitates international dialogue within different contexts, in the framework of the AVE program (Future of the Planet) or of other programs. In this way, the Young People's College, whose structuring started as early as 1992 with a European meeting of students in Toulouse, or the support (since 1987) for international dialogue between farmers' organisations. In the same way, certain dynamics have arisen, which create neighbourhood groups, scientists, women concerned about peace issues, fishermen, business leaders, bankers, etc.

Advancing Pragmatically

We listed around 25 colleges, and 25 different collegial approaches. Then there was the problem of time. In nine or twelve months, we are not able to catch up on time lost, setting up collective dynamics (that take years), for every college.

We need to act in a pragmatic way, while keeping four objectives in mind:

• Helping a network of people within an environment, although they belong to different continents, to think together about applying the principles of the Charter to their own environment;
• Getting people to identify the main challenges of tomorrow's world, as seen from their points of view;
• Opening discussions on each environment, on an international level;
• Selecting particularly representative people in this context, associates or not, of the World Assembly of December 2001, making it truly an Assembly of the Citizens of the World.

If by September of 2001, we succeed in gathering, in the case of the harder-to-build colleges (due to the fact that they are, a priori, more distant from us in their behaviour: business leaders, bankers, military personnel, officials, etc.), a network of 30 or 40 truly significant people (that is to say, those who would be have a bearing on the future of their own environments) belonging to different continents, then we will have reached a good meeting place between what is desirable, and what is possible.

One of the major stages of a collegial process is to help each environment to identify key-words for the main points on which it will wish to make proposals. We also have documents illustrating the approach regarding scientists, local elected representatives, neighbourhood groups, and bankers, as well as regarding the expression of a code of conduct, or choices for working topics.

For more information, please contact:
Juliette Decoster (juliette@alliance21.org) and Isabelle Decout (isabelle@alliance21.org)

Return to Top