Urvi: We've had a few webinars. One was with Dan and then Pallavi which was on their course, living utopias, and this is about the Learning Series. We have another one by Uniteirra on the eighth of July.
We also had one on “Beyond money” by Anitra Nelson, David Barkin and Meenakshi Gupta which was a success.
The upcoming periodical issue is on “Learning alternatives and transformative and emancipatory learning practices. So we have multiple articles from within the GTA network and multiple stories and articles that have been from people and organizations who have been working and questioning the conventional learning initiatives and have been looking at radical methods to rethink learning.
And this time we also have updates from the weavers, and the news of a New weaver joining us. And also, a few updates from our endorsers in the I think. In terms of documenting in a different format. It's an experiment and we're hoping it turns out well.
Ashish: I think if anyone has any questions as well they are welcome to ask that as we go along, as used to do you want to say something that the periodical I think from the last issue onwards is in English and Spanish.
So, we will have hopefully all the upcoming issues in both languages, and also be formatted to look properly like a periodical so it's not just text but also illustrations and photographs and so on.
Melanie: Just very quickly, all the things shared are really fabulous. One of the things that were most exciting to me about Franco's daughter's involvement is I think she's about 11.
If we can begin thinking also about really integrating and including generations that we may have not thought about maybe not for zoom meetings that may not be this thing but in whatever ways, I think it just has so much potential.
I know photographers, a musician, composers teenagers, and it will be really thrilling. So, I wasn't certain about it initially and then when I saw it was like, wow, this has so much depth to it.
Franco: We already published our first report cases stories and in the upcoming weeks, we are going to launch the second one.
That will be presented and hopefully, we will have an online presentation about that. This is part of the collection of a series of case reports, resilience and stories. And we are already working on a number three. I'm planning. Number four.
So this is also an invitation to participate in some way, it's an open process because we're collecting eight to 10 stories reports. Other updates
Vasna: Thanks for that and just on The designer has just this morning sent me the second report, complete so I think we will have it next week to share.
And I also wanted to then mentioned some updates from our involvement in global events, one of the things that we've tried to do is use some of the global gatherings, as a way to platform, the different voices from within the GTA endorses and weavers.
So, as you all know we had quite a presence at the World Social Forum in Mexico.
With both online and hybrid, and in-person events. Some are more successful than others. There were a lot of technical challenges in it.
And as GTA in conjunction with Adelante. We had about five different events that took place, as well as organized an assembly to talk about the convergence convergences and radical alternatives where we had over 50 people present in the in-person event, and about 48 people at the online event as well. So, we continue that by also having representation at the Stockholm plus 50 conferences that took place at the beginning of June, and in both World Social Forum and Stockholm plus 15, we shared a manifesto for radical alternatives in the future, which I think has been shared around all of you but we'll share it again in the, in the chat, and this is to put forward a manifesto of what we see as the problems of the current system and how we see that we need to work together.
We also had a meeting of the core group in Oaxaca, and some of us were able to travel there. Many of us were unable to because of visa issues and Mauricio was our wonderful host so maybe you can just share a little bit on that, Mauricio.
Mauricio:
[SPANISH translation]
Angging and Arvin: We still have no name no final yet, but we're still getting calls so that's definitely the reason why I was not able to share the name so far. We have to propositions. We call ourselves the steering committee members. But we are all, we say the weavers now in Southeast Asia in the region. So we have people for, we have practitioners, alternative practitioners, from the less their Vietnam, Indonesia. We just had the meeting last June 24, the steering committee, but the others were not able to join because there are so many preparations ongoing.
These are some of the highlights that we have discussed as the steering committee. [In presentation], There would be a fourth regional conference and alternatives, which is the Southeast Asia conference of alternatives.
We’re still discussing if it's going to be an online or a hybrid session.. We're trying to think the conference is going to be in October or November, but it seems that some of the weavers in our region are also busy with regional and world conferences. Some of them can go to Manila, but we'll see about that. Because we might we might be able to host the meeting.
So we mentioned the interest in South Asia, so the group of Kalpavriksh and Vikalp Sangam. We might have it back to back with the fourth regional conference, so this is the suggestion of the steering committee. So once we have the final month, we will definitely inform you right away about the preparation.
Okay so far the name, we have two suggestions so far, which is the “Movement for alternatives in Southeast Asia”, because the acronym is MASA. Masa in Tagalog means people or the masses. And then the other one, we have “Southeast Asia people's network/movement for alternatives”.
But there are some discussion are about are we already a movement? Or are we are a network?
We would probably choose some know between the two or maybe an enhanced version of the two. We will finalize that soon so that it can be posted on the GTA website.
The ASEAN civil society conference is going to be in November in Cambodia, this is probably face-to-face. That is also where we are engaging. We just need to think if we're going to participate online or face to face. It would be good as well if the GTA team, and assembly can also participate online probably in that convergence.
Vasna: We also have been approached by a network in Germany in Europe, and Ashish maybe you could say a bit more about that.
Ashish: I think this is quite exciting because the idea of people weaving alternatives together is catching up and then joining the GTA. So this is, there are three groups or networks of platforms in Germany that have gotten together. One is called BUKO. It's 101 campaigns and organizations working on radical alternatives and resistance movements in Germany.
The second is called The Commons Institute, which works on radical commons alternatives. And the third is called Now Network Economic Transformation, which is based on Solidarity Economy, degrowth economy, etc.
So these three have approached us to say that they would like to actually be a weaver, from Germany. We're going to be having a discussion with them on the seventh of July to see what this means, what the implications are, whether we're all comfortable with each other in terms of ethics and values, etc.
And if everything goes well then that could be our fifth, weaver at GTA. And the tapestry keeps growing.
Franco: This is the implementation of a tool that is being developed by GTA with some other endorsers. It's a tool to map and document. It's a collaborative documentation tool so it's kind of like a Wikipedia wiki tool to document the map and experiences, and we are starting to provide these tools to a starting by the weavers of the GTA and other endorsers who have adopted them on their own.
Available in this link: https://map.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/Index
The idea is that there is no central map, but each we will have the capability to run its own instance or implementation of the tool. In order to allow autonomy. And we know that each weaver will have and will have its independent identity criteria. And we want to respect that.
So, one of the aims of these is to be able to have distributed mapping, not only mapping but its documented experiences. But this is just the GTA way of showing updated information in this implementation what we have at the moment are all the current endorsers of GTA with certain information, and we will be starting a process of assisting each of you to enrich this information. Besides, we will be publishing the code in the coming months. So, so others can implement the same technology for their purposes.
One of the features that it's been added in the next release is the capability to map, and not only organizations but also specific stories like we are collecting in the reports that we already shared.
So you're all invited to take a look at this, you have any questions you can mail us.
And you also can register as an endorser or weaver.
Ashish: Just two points. One is I think that in the category now that we also have one of our endorsers perhaps rights of nature could become a category and as Natalia has put in the chat, they're also doing a kind of mapping process so maybe we can link that up in some way. So, Natalia, I think it'd be good if you or whoever is doing it from your side can have a chat with Franco, about the possibility of linking up.
And the second thing is that two of the ideas that came up in PeDAGoG,
Vasna: Formally, we've had some mention about the kind of webinars and the collaborative webinar series that has happened. But PeDAGoG is continuing as a semi-independent process with different people, mostly academics and activists involved in it.
Melanie: With PeDAGoG there are different work groups at different stages, Capacity is always an issue. People are engaged in multiple projects and involvements.
I think a space where collaboration that we might not have thought is possible in the past. It's coming to fruition, you know, and sometimes not when we expect it's coming.
I'd have to think back and look at my notes about the specific projects but just that it's a, it's another energetic space where I'm making connections.
Vasna: And that's quite exciting for me that some of these connections are not ones that everyone's involved in. It's also happening on a one-to-one basis or with a few people. And so that kind of organic growth is constant and we might not even see the full impacts of what is happening within the network.
About a year and a half back, we started a process with seven other global platforms. Because we realized that GTA is one of many, which are trying to do somewhat similar things so we thought that we could try and bring them together. One of the first things we did was to combine into sessions at the Virtual World Social Forum that was organized in January 2021.
We will have the next version of the manifesto based on comments that we received in these meetings and anything else that's come up online. So if any of you would like to please take a look and contribute to its evolution and you're strongly encouraged to please do so.
Mauricio:
[Spanish Translation]
Some of the things GTA has decided on more concretely are that we will be continuing the webinars, the periodical, and the resilience documents, some funding has gone towards supporting the new weavers in Southeast Asia and we're building more connections with weavers elsewhere.
We're continuing to try and learn from each other and document that visually or written. We're at a really exciting moment with some, there's more collaboration between us as weavers and endorsers. But this is also a time to reflect a little bit on our learnings and experiences.
Pallav: We need to be able to sort of expose people to what GTA is all about and try to create that awareness through some kind of outreach. But before doing that we need to be able to figure out how we relate to movements and at some point in time, we can do some kind of brainstorming specifically on, you know, how do we integrate GTA with movements and how do movements have access to what we are doing.
Ashish: Perhaps GTA could also become or form a repository of organizations and movements in different parts of the world including the endorsers here as being potentially available to resistance movements for advice on what could be pre-figurative politics or transfigurative politics.
We have a little bit of funding for there to be a physical meeting sometime in 2023 for the GTA endorsers to come together with the viewer's endorsers on the core team to come together. It's not a huge amount of funding so I don't think everybody can be supported but basically, we want to try and create a space where to come together for a few days to discuss and brainstorm.
If any of you can also come in with additional resources or be able to support yourself, then we can bring in that many more people. So I just wanted to put this seed into everybody's mind to think about more. We have no other specific details at the moment.
Mauricio:
[Spanish translation]
Ashish: Just a quick note we did invite La Via Campesina, their Secretariat to endorse the GTA process. They said they were going to be internally discussing it but this was in the early phase of the GTA. But now that you will have another closer connection, I can forward you that correspondence, and then you can take it forward in whichever way you think is appropriate.
Martha: I'm very much interested in really getting to know how can we weave in joint efforts in understanding how GTA help these movements, in this case, the Latin American dialogue.
We will have a dialogue next bit in July for the dialogue that we started during the World Social Forum.
Ashish: One piece of news that I could add also is that Greenpeace International is also currently considering endorsing, but also that they initiated. Some months back a process of building a kind of a vision and strategic plan on radical alternatives independently on their own, and they are now wanting to see how that could be co evolved with a lot of other organizations and networks so we had one session and one discussion with them. And we suggested that even when they join GTA as an endorser they could actually present that document or that vision also to to all of you.
Natalia:
[Spanish translation]
Martha:
[Spanish translation]
Ashish:
It would be nice to hear positive stories coming in from some parts of the world like that.
Mauricio:
[Spanish translation]
—– Next GTA Assembly: Last week of September