The Power of Experience
"DPH Butterflies"
at the World Citizens Assembly - Lille (December 2 to 10)

DPH (Dialogues for the Progress of Humanity) public scribes, called "butterflies," were put into action for the first time in Istanbul at the 1997 Habitat II meeting www.webdph.net/new . Later "butterfly" operations led to improvements in this type of action: at the meeting of Inhabitants in Dakar (1998), the International Youth Parliament in Sydney (2000), and during the first World Social Forum (Porto Alegre). All the more powerful thanks to the teachings of these first experiments, the operation in Lille was a complete success.

The DPH team, which coordinated the task of compiling the experiences of the participants at the World Citizens Assembly, relied on the one hand on students from the Catholic Institute of Paris, the Institut de l'Aménagement des Territoires (institute of landscape planning) of Lille, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Youth Workshop and on the other hand, on their partners from Paris, Brussels, Bogota, and Sydney.

The team went to two previous training workshops (in Paris and in Lille) to prepare for this operation. An interview outline and a writing template were produced. The template allowed some participants to write their own professional experience directly, without the help of the DPH scribes.

Members of the team attended the socioprofessional, thematic, and geographical workshops, to identify, with the help of the facilitators, persons with interesting experiences. The interviews took place at lunchtime or in the evening after the workshops. The team had an editorial staff meeting every afternoon to discuss the progress of the work, and to read and to finalize the writing collectively. The technical processing of the experience reports took place the following day partly on site, and partly remotely (publication of the reports on the Web site). http://62.4.23.226/dph_lille/experience/

This operation made it possible :
- to back the organization of the debates, along with the mapping;
- to give some participants a voice on their own experience, by encouraging personal expression (in addition to the collective socioprofessional, topical, and geographical expression);
- to keep an organized record of the wealth of experiences and of the discussions and the thinking of the workshops.

In the latest issue of the DPH newsletter, Vladimir Ugarte (vladimir@fph.fr) described the participation of the " DPH butterflies" at the Citizens Assembly in Lille as follows :

"In a smoke-filled corner of the large hall of the Palais du Nouveau Siècle in Lille, a student is diligently asking the questions that were set out to guide her in completing her interview. The four Arabic-speaking interpreters are hard at work gathering the information that the participant is providing with utmost detail.
This will be the raw material for drafting the experience report. It is late and everyone is feeling tired. But no one wants to stop before this is finished. The student is absolutely determined to complete the interview. Monday, December 3, while the participants of the 20 socioprofessional networks present in Lille introduced themselves, she had taken care to note all of her appointments: with an African farmer, an Indian soldier, a Russian mother, a Brazilian artist.
The following day at 2:30 p.m. and then every day until the end of the meeting, the "DPH butterflies" editorial staff will meet in the Quebec room to edit the reports, comment on them, and fine tune the interviewing method. The staff meetings, as well as the whole process, are being steered by Dacha Radovic <dacha@fph.fr>. Every day, the 21 students and DPH staff are collecting the voices of the 400 participants. They are attempting to provide a written record of so many fights and hopes. Just to be able to say that in Bangkok, in Kiev, in Santiago, or in Dakar, there are people who are organized to propose another globalization...
The 20 "DPH butterflies" come from Grenoble, Lille, Paris, Brussels, and even from Sydney. The training institutions and the university departments met the challenge. Other partners joined them. The team has built friendship and learned while they were doing so, between laughter and discussion. DPH in Lille is one of the keys of the Assembly method. Rooms close, faces are weary, and everyone agrees on what they will do the following day. The first batch of 30 reports will be sent through the Internet to be published on the Assembly Web site. "

At the end the Assembly about one hundred high-quality experience reports were completed (52 in French, 12 in English, and 23 in Spanish). Forty reports were translated on site by the student translators. A large part of the reports were published on the Web site before the end of the Assembly.
A dozen participants wished to describe their own experience even after the Assembly was over. The wealth of these experiences is now being taken full advantage of and circulated through the Web site.