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THE GCAP E-LETTER 2007 - September 24th 2007 - Edition #10

GCAP Together for Equality English

 

 

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THE GCAP E-LETTER 2007

 

 September 24th 2007 - Edition #10

 

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The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) is a growing alliance of trade unions, community groups, faith groups, women and youth organisations, NGOs and other campaigners working together across more than 100 national platforms. GCAP is calling for action from the world’s leaders to meet their promises to end poverty and inequality. The white band is our symbol and expression of solidarity against poverty.

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With just 22 days to go to October 17th things are really heating up in all GCAP coalitions now and here at the Support Team there is a flurry of activity to help coalitions and other campaign partners with mobilization and other political expressions on October 17th.  We are pleased that every day we are getting more details of planned events coming through but concerned that we are still not inundated so if you have to still send back your details to Sarah do it now so we can help publicise your national efforts.  We are delighted with our new short video which we will be distributing soon for use at events and online and wherever you hope to inspire people to take a stand against poverty.  Other key mobilisation material that includes posters, banners, white bands, t-shirts, school material, postcards will also be ready and disseminated to coalitions and partners.

 

Measuring success of lobby efforts in poverty eradication is not always easy and headway on issues of trade and debt relief has recently been particularly tricky.  We were therefore enormously pleased to hear this week that our GCAP Bangladesh colleagues at PFM had a bit of an advocacy coup. After a series of roundtables with civil society groups criticizing World Bank and IMF policies, the Bangladesh Government has decided not to concede to IMF pressure and declared its stance against signing the controversial Policy Support Instrument (PSI).  The civil society groups maintained that IMF strings have consistently lead Bangladesh into deeper debts with its hard conditionality and that it was time that they said no to such conditionalities imposed by institutions like IMF.

 

This allows us all in GCAP to built on the strong message about we are bringing to the IFI meetings in Washington DC in late October and hopefully will encourage other countries to see this as inspiration and keep up the pressure against harmful agreements like these.  We will have a strong team of spokespersons in Washington at the meeting and have just completed an update on the GCAP policy document produced for these meetings and is on the tools of the whiteband website.

 

Irfan Mufti, GCAP Campaign Manager

 

MOBILISATION Update

22 days to go! We now have plans through from around 50 countries for activities on October 17. If you have not already sent them, please download the form here and send through to Sarah

 

Stand Up and Speak Out Website – Relaunched!

Check out the new website at standagainstpoverty.org! There are now hundreds of activities registered – make sure to put yours online! There is also a counter to countdown the days until October 17.

 

Stand Up and Speak Out Materials

Now available on the stand up website are a range of new resources including brochures, banners, badges, stickers, youth activities, videos – plenty available to download and use in your events. Do make sure to also read through the counting note (www.standagainstpoverty.org/materials?filter0=5800&filter1=**ALL**) to be sure that the people you are mobilising are counted for the record.

 

Banners Against Poverty

The Banners sub-group is actively working to support the 25 national members (more countries are joining every week) who are right now creating large joined national banners to be displayed on October 17th.  One country to highlight is Ghana where a 1km long banner has been made with the support from 30 different education institutions. After October 17th segments of all the national banners will be joined together to create large Global banner to be displayed at later events.

For more information please contact Joe at the support team

 

GCAP Stand Up and Speak Out Video Clip

A new GCAP 90 second film clip highlighting the historical and political significance of standing up and speaking out against poverty and injustice is almost ready to be distributed. The film clip will be used in the build up to October 17th to showcase the impact of social movements and collective struggle.  After October 17th the clip will be edited so that it can be used as an ongoing GCAP tool.  DVD copies of the clip will be distributed to National Coalitions over the next week and it will be available for online viewing shortly.

For more information please contact Joe at the support team

 

Visits to political representatives

GCAP friends will be meeting with political representatives at seminars, meetings and events on every continent and in more than 20 countries before and on October 17th. We wish you well with these meetings and encourage you to send high quality photographs of these meetings to Ben and Henri immediately afterwards. They will publicise your events through the web site and at the annual meetings on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington from 20-22 October.

 

Annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF

The IFT agreed that the major global political target for this year’s mobilisation will be the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF which take place in Washington from 20-22 October.  GCAP is holding a series of events at the meetings including a performance of the Poverty Requiem, the display of 122 life-size figures representing every GCAP national coalition, a press conference and a photography exhibit. Please ensure you send any high resolution photos for inclusion in the

photography exhibition to Ben as soon as possible. We hope to display this in the World Bank itself to take your message directly to senior officials and political representatives. We will also be organising small lobby meetings with senior Bank officials.  If you would like more information on what GCAP is doing at the annual meetings please go to www.whiteband.org or get in touch with Ben. Details of GCAPs agreed political demands are also on the web site in 5 languages.

 


Outreach update

The Support team has been reaching out to large organisations, unions, NGOs, associations and educational establishments the world over in an effort to involve more people in more countries to get involved in October 17th mobilisation, and to stay in the GCAP family afterwards. So far we have had some good responses from a number of organisations, including official endorsements from many INGOs, and a number of constituency groups not formerly involved in Stand Up activities, such as gyms.

For more information please contact Caitlin at the support team.

 


Children and Youth Task Force Update

The Children and Youth Task Force (CYTF) recently issued a call-out to student unions around the world to mobilize their members and take action on October 17th.  The responses from have been large and promising, with student unions and networks in Africa taking a lead.  To facilitate the participation of both children and youth, the CYTF in collaboration with the UNMC has created a wide range of materials which can be downloaded and distributed at www.standagainstpoverty.org/taxonomy/term/5803.  Some of these materials include: Buttons, Posters, Stickers, etc… Please download these materials and distribute them to your respective youth networks.

For more information please contact Joe at the support team

 

Media and Communications

A Media Toolkit is in the final stages of development and will be distributed in English this week with translations to follow.  The toolkit is an invaluable resource for all GCAP national coalitions to prepare their material and messages for October 17th and will prove useful we hope long after this whiteband day.

The next major communication to the media globally will be on October 1st when we will issue a release about the main plans for Stand up and Speak Out and encourage national coalitions to adapt to include locally relevant information as well.  This will be circulated very soon.

Thank you to everyone who submitted profiles of people who are taking part in October 17th mobilisations.  We received some really impressive and inspiring personal stories, which are being distributed to the media and will hopefully generate some interest in the events planned.

 

e-Communications

 

Whiteband.org

If you still need the October 17 policy guidelines and mobilisation tools, download them in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic at: www.whiteband.org/Action/gcap-2007-mobilisation-tools/

 
Researching GCAP’s e-advocacy 

Last week we invited sixty GCAP webmasters to join a network-wide study about our online campaign. This research project is part of an effort to improve GCAP’s online campaigning expertise while also supporting non-profit e-engagement research.  This study is being carried out by a partnership between the GCAP E-Communications Task-Force and the University of Wolverhampton’s Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group.  Participation is open to all coalition members with a GCAP website; however, we hope the outcomes of this study will provide valuable guidance for GCAP members setting up websites in the future.

With a mandate till 2015, it is important that we understand how users see our e-campaigning efforts so we can strengthen our mobilization abilities and long-term impacts.  To learn more about this project, visit: www.whiteband.org/about-gcap/gcap-sites-1/researching-gcap-s-e-advocacy-in-2007    

If your campaign website operators have not yet designated a website focal point for this study, we invite you to do so here: www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fSnsPm6zem8_2bBb_2f5laZfeA_3d_3d

 
BLOG**BLOG**BLOG**BLOG**BLOG**BLOG**BLOG**BLOG**

We will be setting up a blogging facility on www.whiteband.org in advance of October 17th so if you would like to send a blog from your country on the day of your mobilisation let us know and we will tell you how to become a GCAP BLOGGER.

For more information contact Ciara O’Sullivan on ciara_os@hotmail.com or ciara.osullivan@civicus.org

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The GCAP IFT Support Team

 
Irfan Mufti, Campaign Manager 

Katsuji Imata, Organizational Development Coordinator  

Ciara O’Sullivan, Media and Communication Coordinator (E-letter editor)

Sarah Gregory, Outreach and Mobilization Coordinator  

Henri Valot, Web and New Media Coordinator 

Joe Cressy, Mobilisation Officer  

Caitlin Blaser, Campaign Officer

Tebogo Sililo, Support Team Volunteer

 

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Whiteband.org

 

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GCAP IFT support team

C/O CIVICUS

PO Box 933, Southdale 2135

Johannesburg – South-Africa

Email: info@whiteband.org

Tel: + 27 11 833 59 59    Fax: + 27 11 833 97 79