Martí Olivella’s speech during the closing session of the World Citizen Assembly 
Lille, France, 10/12/2001

Conclusions of the two Alliance facilitators meetings held during the Assembly

Since 1993 we have had a common horizon, which we have just reached by organising this Assembly. A seed was created at the beginning of this stage of the Alliance, which has just given fruit. And this fruit is providing us in turn with new seeds that need to be sown everywhere.

We have to thank those who have sown and cared for this tree. The Vezelay Group, Pierre and Paulette Calame, the Foundation Council, the people responsible for the programmes and all the organising teams. But we also have to thank all the allies who have become involved, and particularly those who have undertaken to co-ordinate groups and encounters. The material investment has been enormous, but the driving force has been the human investment.

Most of the Alliance’s group facilitators have now had the opportunity to meet each other and other Assembly participants. We have seen that there is a will to continue with these group dynamics. But we also wish to accept a common responsibility in this new stage of the Alliance:

1.	We invite you to spend 3 months sharing what we have learnt from the Alliance so far. And another 3 months to share what we expect from the future, which will help us to define a new common horizon (with the possibility of completing this process with an encounter).

2.	We have to decide how we are going to continue with the production and distribution of proposal booklets, and how to transform these proposals into plans of action and projects aimed at changing the situation. We also have to seek financing.

We have started to broadly define different Alliance projects as part of our general dynamics. Here are 6 examples:

1.	Transforming the proposal papers into a means of dialogue between each other (workshops, geocultural and socioprofessional groups) and other actors, adding a questionnaire to assess the proposals and a website where we can see the readers’ assessments of each booklet.
2.	Improving how we participate and the means of communication.
3.	Training intercultural co-ordinators to improve the participation and meeting processes.
4.	Seeking financing thanks to the rich content, contacts and methods that we have produced, and the definition of new projects directly related to some of the proposals that are included in the booklets or have arisen during the Assembly.
5.	Strengthening the relations and co-operation between schools, theme and regional groups, reading and assessing each other’s proposal papers, defining common projects and taking part in the definition and organisation of the new stage of the Alliance.
6.	Strengthening our relations with other initiatives providing proposals, contacts, methods...: World Social Forum, Global Citizen Initiative Forum, Ubuntu –World Network Forum, the Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004...

As Pierre Calame has just emphasised, we wish to help to reinforce the Alliance as a platform for freedom, encouraging means of involvement that allow us all together to build and struggle to reach new horizons.

We hope that the Foundation Charles Léopold Mayer for the Progress of Humankind (FPH) and other sources of financing clarify how they wish to contribute to help to define this new era.

And finally, I would like to express my special thanks to Gustavo Marin, responsible of the Future of the Planet Programme, for his hard work and enthusiasm, both of which have been decisive for the Alliance’s development.