1. Introduction

For AWID, the opportunity to organize a major international forum on Women’s Rights and Development links to the core of our mission by responding to the urgency to promote stronger and more coordinated engagement and action by women’s rights advocates, organizations and movements to more effectively advance women’s rights.

The selection of “The Power of Movements” as the theme for AWID’s 11^th International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development in November 2008 responded to our belief that building collective power is key to advancing feminist agendas, as well as our experience that this process does not happen on its own - we need to make it happen. Diverse women’s movements and women’s organizing have played a key role in the achievements related to women’s rights and gender equality worldwide. One part of the analysis that drove our selection of the Forum theme was that women’s movements in many places and contexts around the world have been ‘holding the line’ in the last several years, making limited progress in some areas and feeling hard-pressed to adapt strategies to an increasingly adverse context. This suggests the need for women’s rights activists to urgently rethink how we work together and who we work with.

For example, we see significant successes of indigenous women’s movements in recent years, but in spaces with mainstream feminist activists, their advances are not commonly recognized as part of our common cause. Thus AWID’s aim was to place a broad diversity of activists at the center of the Forum agenda so that participants would be pushed to look to the varied array of experiences and expressions of women’s organizing, and through that recognize the broader possibilities for alliance-building. While a rich array of feminist and women’s organizing processes and movements has emerged in the last decade, there have been limited spaces to discuss their implications or to think about what other processes we could create or learn from.

With this Forum, we purposefully aimed to turn the lens inward: on ourselves, our organizations, our strategies and our ways to go about building collective power. We wanted to look at how we might organize and mobilize more effectively. We also wanted to firmly resist the increasing pressure on women’s organizations to move away from movement building to project-oriented approaches that focus on delivering so-called ‘concrete’ or easily quantifiable outputs and services. We wanted to create a space for women to re-focus on strategies that build collective power to challenge the roots of gender discrimination and other forms of social exclusion and oppression. We recognized the risk in this approach: in the face of so many contextual challenges and setbacks, to focus on ourselves might seem a luxury we can scarce afford. However, we believe that it is precisely because of the challenging context that creating space for discussion and strategy development was and continues to be an urgent task, in order to strengthen our organizations and movements as a means to build collective power towards a more just world.

The Forum was designed with the hope of advancing the following six outcomes:

1. Greater understanding of what movement building is, why it’s important, and what we can do to strengthen movement building processes
2. Significant steps to overcome the fragmentation within women’s movements, focusing in particular on issues of diversity and inclusion.
3. Advancing conversations and thinking among diverse women’s rights advocates on elements of a shared political agenda (that is, an agenda to transform power relations, broader than a particular issue or identity).
4. Expanded strategic alliances with other social movements, connecting in particular with women’s rights advocates within these movements.
5. Significant visibility and engagement of young women in key debates and strategies of women’s movements, contributing to more effective multi-generational movement-building.
6. The revitalization (meaning having participants leave with a renewed sense of commitment and energy, inspiration, as well as new allies, strategies, and ways of thinking and acting) of women’s organizations and movements generally but also very particularly in Africa, the region where the Forum was held.

To craft the Forum agenda, AWID drew on the experience and insights of the 31 members of our International Planning Committee to help us select sessions and frame the plenaries. With their guidance, we aimed to ensure a diverse offering to match the diverse interests of participants. Session themes covered economic and social rights, education and culture, sustainable development, multigenerational organizing, overcoming fragmentation and alliance-building, constituency-building, organizational strengthening, sexual rights and reproductive rights, HIV and AIDS, communications and technology, violence against women, conflict and post-conflict/peace-building. We aimed to build the Forum as a feminist space, valuing the relevance of individual women’s stories and experience as part of the broader collective process of constructing knowledge. Identity, body politics, sexuality were thus consistently critical themes that emerged and axes for talking about experiences with power and movement-building

For the first time, AWID, led by our Building Feminist Movements and Organizations (BFEMO) strategic initiative, developed some core content as a foundation for Forum discussions. Changing Their World – Concepts and Practices of Women’s Movements proposed definitions of a movement, and particularly what constitutes a feminist movement, and analyzed core elements of movement strategies. Changing Their World was sent to all Forum registrants via email prior to the Forum and printed copies were made available in English, Spanish and French on-site.

The present document shares AWID’s perspective on the Forum: what we believe was accomplished, what we learned, and how we will be taking these lessons forward in the planning of the next AWID Forum. We are drawing on internal debriefs, results of the post-Forum on-line evaluation survey (591 responses received – almost a 33% response rate), interviews and many informal conversations with Forum participants. We’re in the process of conducting a ‘year-after’ evaluation of the Forum, which will help us further understand its impact. We’ll also soon be receiving reports from the 25 Forum seed grant recipients and learning from their experiences.

The circumstances under which the Forum took place were less than ideal for AWID with the absence, due to serious illness, of our Executive Director, Lydia Alpízar Durán for four months preceding and during the Forum. Yet the AWID staff, Board and members of the International Planning Committee worked together very effectively to organize a successful Forum.

After analyzing a range of information collected about the Forum and participant experiences, it is clear that the AWID Forum created an inclusive space for diverse expressions of women’s organizing and also contributed to opening up or advancing several sensitive internal debates—on NGO-ization, competition, power dynamics within women’s movements—that are critical for our organizations to address head-on. Also, the 2008 AWID Forum is remembered as a space that contributed to positioning multi-generational movement-building on the agenda of many women’s organizations, their allies, and donors. Naturally, many questions remain, but feedback we have received affirms that the Forum made a useful contribution, expanding possibilities for alliances and collaborative action.

The opportunity to bring close to 2,000 diverse women’s rights activists together is all too rare and the stakes are high for ensuring that a Forum is a good use of resources—both financial and human—on the part of organizers and participants. We are committed to continuing to strengthen the Forum, both substantively and methodologically, so that it can serve its valuable purpose well. Our sincere thanks and appreciation go out to all of those who participated in Forum 2008, to the donors that provided financial support, and to everyone who contributed to making it a great success. We are very much looking forward to applying the many lessons from that experience as we prepare the next AWID Forum —we hope to see you there!

2. In what did we succeed? Forum Achievements

The Forum contributed to a greater understanding of what movement building is, why it’s important, and what can be done to strengthen movement-building processes. “New learning and expanded view of women’s movements” was the single largest category of change identified by respondents to the evaluation survey – almost 50% - when answering the question: How did the Forum change you? In response to other survey questions, 93% stated that the Forum had given them an increased awareness of what their organizations can do differently to strengthen women’s movements, and 90% also felt that they had gained greater clarity on the importance and challenges of movement-building. 91% agreed that “this Forum challenged me in useful ways” with a solid and creative program. One event that helped further understanding of the power of movements was the march against violence against women organized by South Africa’s One in Nine Campaign on the second day of the Forum. Many bloggers, for instance, spoke about the profound effect of the march on simulating for its participants, both the power of movements as well as the power of overcoming fragmentation and working together across our different identities and locations.

The Forum attracted a large and diverse array of participants. This was an important achievement, considering AWID’s commitment to attempting to reflect the diversity of women’s movements within the Forum space. 82% of the respondents to our online survey stated that they were attending an AWID Forum for the first time, telling us that an entire new spectrum of activists utilized the AWID space, rather than the same veteran conference-goers. 67% of the respondents characterized themselves as women’s rights activist/advocate, while 11% identified with “other independent women’s movement”. In addition to our Access Fund, providing travel grants for 216 session organizers and speakers, AWID mobilized resources for a special “movement-building fund” which awarded travel grants to 50 activists from sectors often significantly under-represented in international women’s rights fora. Almost a quarter of Forum participants were young women from all the six continents; we reached the highest participation of women from the Middle East, Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa in an AWID Forum; and the number of women with disabilities and sessions by and on women with disabilities reached an all-time high.

The regional breakdown of registered participants was as follows:

The Forum fostered new conversations and thinking among diverse women’s rights advocates around elements of a shared political agenda. As described above, one of our hopes with the Forum was for participants to find common cause with other activists, to find some level of shared purpose that could facilitate links of solidarity and collaboration across differences. Although this is a long term effort that must stretch well into the future, we saw some promising signs at the Forum with new initiatives taking shape and existing initiatives gaining increased attention. A group of South African women coalesced around creating a joint agenda for building a feminist campaign to monitor and demand accountability from the country’s political system, parties, and elected representatives. They also aimed to explore the possibility of launching a women’s political party as a counterforce. The final day of the Forum saw a flurry of statements and campaigns being launched on a wide array of issues from climate change to aid agendas, including a statement related to a feminist perspective on the current financial crisis and economic recession (which many participants noted was a significant absence in the Forum). Some of these statements and campaigns represent new agendas that emerged in the course of the Forum, while others had been developing well before, but gained exposure and support at the Forum. Women who came seeking solidarity for their struggles—from Atenco, Mexico to the Democratic Republic of Congo—used the opportunity to share their experiences with other activists and we heard from some about their unexpected surprise with finding common cause among such diverse women.

The Forum contributed to the process of building strategic alliances. Part of our intent with bringing together a diverse array of activists is the hope that some lasting connections can emerge from this exposure and initial opportunity for exchange—connections that can be mutually enriching and contribute to stronger movements. We know that the Forum provides many participants with a chance to meet others from places or sectors that they would not normally have an opportunity to engage with in person. Our survey results show that, indeed, participants forged a range of new relationships at the Forum: 92% of the 591 respondents stated that the Forum enabled them to connect “with people from groups or sectors I don’t generally work with” (56% = strongly agree; 36% somewhat agree). And the exact same percentage i.e., 92% - agreed with the statement “I leave this Forum with new allies that I look forward to contacting soon.” (59% = strongly agree; 33% = somewhat agree). Through several sessions we saw participants grappling with the power dynamics inhibiting stronger alliances among women’s organizations and aiming to create new rules of engagement to overcome such obstacles. A critical area of alliance building that received a great deal of attention and participation was the donor world, and the challenges of reframing the relationship between women’s organizations and donors to strengthen support for transformative movement building work and reduce the emphasis on short-term projects and “magic bullets”. The Funders Forum was well attended and generated some heated exchanges as well as real debate and several related sessions saw lively discussions around donor policies and how these could be re-aligned to support movement-oriented approaches.

The Forum contributed to significant visibility and engagement of young women in key debates and strategies of women’s movements, contributing to more effective multi-generational movement building. At the Forum, AWID’s Young Feminist Activism (YFA) program sought to highlight the contributions of young women to women’s movements, and to ensure that the discussion around movement building was inclusive of young women, their voices and perspectives, as well as to advance thinking on the role of intergenerational solidarity and multigenerational strategies in movement building. The ‘YFA Forum Committee’ - a group of 45 women of all ages worked together for several months prior to the Forum and then met face-to-face on site to strategize on how best to optimise young women’s participation, foster multigenerational dialogue, and encourage intergenerational interaction, discussion and collaboration at the Forum. Pink scarves worn by Forum participants as tokens of support for intergenerational movement building turned into a powerful visual statement, that spurred discussions and debates about the meaning of the term ‘multigenerational’, its role in the development of strong and effective movements, and the practicalities of achieving balanced dialogue and solidarity across generations. Age-exclusive activities like the Young Women’s Caucus created safe spaces for young women to discuss and critique women’s organizations and movements and, together with our strategy of ensuring young women’s representation in plenaries and sessions, supported the active contribution of young women to multigenerational spaces at the Forum. The Young Feminist Fund – an idea that had emerged from AWID’s work with young feminists earlier in the year, found new traction and support at the Forum for mobilizing significant resources to support the next generation of movement builders. Over 22% of Forum delegates were under the age of 30. 91% of respondents to our online survey agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “…young women were visible and central players in advancing discussions around movement building” and 95% agreed that the Forum did a good job of providing space for the perspectives of women of different generations to be present and valued.

We expanded the use of ICTs within the Forum itself, thus expanding the Forum’s reach and impact. Recognizing the weakness of many women’s rights and feminist activists and movements in using communications technologies in their work, AWID was very pleased to partner with the Association of Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC-WNSP) to strengthen this dimension of the Forum. The pre-Forum Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX), was an opportunity for over 100 women participants to learn about audio and video tools, social networking, digital storytelling and much more. During the Forum, there was an active content creation community at the FTX Hub, which shared insights and experiences from the Forum in multiple languages. In addition, simultaneous podcasts of Forum plenaries, Feminist International Radio Endeavour’s daily FIREPLACE broadcasts, and enabling of e-mail communication for participants helped to make the Forum accessible to a diverse range of women, organizations, and movements who couldn’t physically be present. Beyond just using ICTs, FTX participants and the FTX Hub pushed Forum participants (and organizers) to think more about communications rights and feminist approaches to technology. In fact, 4 of the 25 seed grants awarded after the Forum build on FTX-related themes. While still a relatively underdeveloped theme in 2008, we look forward to expanding on this much further in the 2012 Forum.

Participants left the Forum with a renewed sense of commitment and energy, inspiration. We know that high levels of stress and burnout have a hugely negative impact on women’s movements. We hope that the Forum in some small way can help participants reconnect to what gives them energy and sustains them over the long haul. Forum blogs and the online survey results, as well as unsolicited compliments and conversations overheard leave us in no doubt – 96% of respondents to the evaluation survey agreed that “the Forum was inspiring and energizing”. The wide array of artistic, cultural, and body-movement events offered at this Forum were aimed both at revitalizing participants as well as reminding us all of the power of breaking out of ‘head space’ in our analysis and strategizing. Similarly, several sessions sought to address and legitimize issues of self-care as necessary for the sustainability of women’s movements.

3. Where can we improve? Critical Lessons & Insights

With every Forum, AWID learns a great deal—both from evaluations and feedback from participants, conversations and interviews with key partners, as well as through internal staff reflections. Some of the critiques we can address directly, while others reflect difficult trade-offs that are always present in organizing such an event.

Engagement with local women’s organizations: In the lead-up to a Forum, AWID reaches out to local women’s organizations to share information about the event and explore ways of using the Forum to advance local women’s rights agendas. AWID ensures that some activists from the ‘host’ country are on the International Planning Committee, we include a number of sessions led by local groups in the Forum program, and we normally provide about 100 free registrations (for the Cape Town Forum this was doubled to 200) for representatives from local women’s groups. In addition, we try to coordinate, when possible, with events targeting local press or public to promote visibility for women’s rights issues that are part of the struggles of local women’s movements. Following our experience in Cape Town—where some activists and organizations mobilized against the Forum, feeling that the process of session selection was not transparent and the registration fees too high—we came to see that an event of this magnitude requires much more pro-active outreach on the part of AWID, particularly to address the kind of miscommunication and misinformation that can generate unnecessary tensions. This means more proactive local ambassadors, more focused local communication efforts with women’s movements, as well as regular open interaction with an array of relevant actors in the host country. We will continue to make a sizeable number of free registrations available for local participants, as well as review our approach to the role and visibility of organizations from the host country in the Forum program (while still maintaining the Forum as an international—not regional or country-focused—event).

Responsiveness to Shifts in Context: The financial crisis exploded about 6 weeks prior to the 2008 Forum. We expected that the crisis and its implications would filter into the plenaries (particularly the plenary on the external context) and some sessions, but we did not request that speakers specifically speak to the crisis (or look for new speakers who could). Although we heard from some participants that they felt the crisis was recognized and discussed sufficiently, the majority felt that the absence of more debate around the crisis was a significant weakness and a lost opportunity to strategically use such a diverse space in a very particular political moment—for example to launch common actions, or give greater visibility to related joint statements. Although our capacity to make major changes in the Forum program at a late date is limited, AWID has taken from this experience the importance of further contingency planning so that we can be responsive and incorporate such contextual changes and their impacts on women’s rights organizing in a meaningful way.

Openness and Safety: Forum registration is an open process (registrations are not vetted or reviewed) and in past Forums, we never had a situation where there were more interested registrants than the number that could be accommodated. In the 2008 Forum we were both in a position where we had to turn away interested participants because we were over-capacity and we saw some participants in the space who did not embrace core feminist principles of respect for diversity and equality, engaging in ‘hate’ speech particularly in sessions around LGBTQ rights. The nature of participation by some men in attendance was also perceived as threatening, particularly in sessions on sexuality. This raised significant questions around the extent to which the AWID Forum can be a “safe” space at the time it remains an ‘open’ space, as well as whether or how we might screen Forum participants. What is clear from this experience is that by making the forum such an inclusive and diverse space, we need to be better prepared at AWID to manage the diversity in a way that it enriches us all and contributes to building a space where participants can raise their differences in respectful ways, protecting the integrity of all people present there. For future AWID Forums we will be strategizing with the International Planning Committee and other key actors on how to address these challenges.

More opportunities for in-depth debate, strategizing and substantive interaction among participants: Participants consistently seek opportunities for deeper engagement in the various Forum spaces and AWID faces difficult trade-offs between the diversity of voices and experiences and time for more in-depth analysis. We heard from some participants who expressed interest in plenaries offering more depth (with fewer speakers). We also heard frustration that some of the break-out sessions ended up as ‘talking heads’, with limited interaction, or that the limited time for sessions means there is just enough time to share information and no opportunity to really deepen analysis or probe and explore possible strategies. There was also feedback pushing us to not simply recap challenges or problems that most people are aware of but to go to the ‘whys’, the analysis, raise questions that can spark new ideas. The broad diversity of participants, and their varying levels of exposure and experience with the range of themes addressed at the Forum can also complicate in-depth debate or strategizing—some come wanting to learn about something that is completely new to them, for example the experiences of women’s organizing from different regions or on different issues, while others want to use the space to expand conversations or do more in-depth thinking and debating on issues they’ve been grappling with for many years. For the 2008 Forum we tried to strengthen accompaniment of session organizers and provided methodological guidelines and tips from past experience. In future AWID Forums, we will be exploring other formats that we hope might provide greater opportunities for depth and interaction as well as strategizing.

More diversity among participants as well as speakers: The politics of representation is acutely felt in an event such as the Forum, and we hear from participants when they feel that a particular voice was not adequately reflected in the agenda. AWID struggles to ensure diversity of speakers in plenaries and sessions, although we have limited control over the latter and with the former, we face space and time limitations. With the 2008 Forum we had hoped to attract as participants more women from other social movements and grassroots organizations who might not normally attend an international feminist event, but would have a great deal to contribute to the dialogue on “the power of movements”. In practice, we were reminded that because such relationships are often tenuous, the time demands to facilitate this participation are extensive. As a result, participation of actors from other social movements was less than we had hoped. This is a lesson we will be factoring into the planning for our next forum.

Questions of diversity in representation are also linked with questions of accessibility—whether related to financial constraints, quality interpretation, or other dimensions. We recognize that the cost of Forum registration—while covering only a fraction of the total Forum expense—is significant and for some groups prohibitive. We have frequently debated pros and cons of sliding scales, or a much lower flat registration rate and will be returning to these questions for the next Forum. At the same time, we have also been very flexible with groups who approach us requesting a reduced rate. Although professional interpretation was provided in English-Arabic-French-Spanish (for plenaries and select sessions), we heard that there were issues with the quality of interpretation, frustration that not all sessions had interpretation and that the participation of Arabic, French and Spanish-speaking delegates was hindered by these limitations. We have also received requests to expand accessibility by providing sign language interpretation and making key materials available in Braille. We will continue to explore possibilities for expanding the accessibility of the Forum, recognizing that these possibilities also have significant financial implications. Finally, some Forum participants reported feeling that it was a difficult space for ‘newcomers’ to engage and feel comfortable with. This is also a recurring theme and although we expanded the Forum orientation program, we will continue to explore other possibilities for greater integration into the space.

Breadth and balance of the Forum program: We repeatedly hear from Forum participants that there is too much in the Forum program—too many different choices and parallel activities. However when the time comes for us to select fewer sessions for the agenda, AWID faces strong pressure from members and partners seeking a place in the agenda. We had initially aimed to have just 100 sessions for Forum 2008 but received such strong complaints that we maximized use of time and space to accommodate over 170. With close to 2,000 participants and limited space, having a variety of activities at the same time is the strategy AWID uses to ensure that there is ‘something for everyone’. But we will also be exploring the value of unstructured space in the agenda, as well as looking at the strong interest in more creative, cultural events as part of the forum program.

The content of the sessions is a function of the proposals AWID receives. Although we aim to select session proposals covering an appropriate diversity of themes, and to organize special ‘gap filler’ sessions when we see a crucial theme not reflected among the sessions, the particular make-up of the program is reflective of difficult choices between high quality proposals and an array of issues in keeping with the scope set out by the forum call for proposals. A particular weakness noted in Forum 2008 was the limited offering of sessions (and plenary speakers) related to development, economics and trade issues—not just from the perspective of the financial and economic crisis, but also recognizing the crucial role of women’s organizing on these issues and the links between livelihoods and movement-building strategies. In a sense, the Forum program reflects the sectors of women’s movements that most actively engage with AWID and the Forum. This tells us that we need to invest significant effort and outreach to more organizations working on economic justice to ensure they have appropriate space within the Forum.

More effective multigenerational reflection and engagement: The visibility and participation of young women in the Forum was largely rated a great success, however this highlighted the absence of support mechanisms responding to the needs of women from other generations (like the veterans) in our movements. This raised an ongoing tension whereby advocacy to overcome the exclusion and isolation experienced by young women activists leaves women from other generations feeling excluded or unappreciated. This tension needs to be addressed directly in future strategies built around generations as an identity. While the message of multigenerational movement-building was received with enthusiasm, there is still clearly a need to move beyond the rhetoric and support further discussion about how to do this in practice. The popularity of the ‘pink scarves’ left us reflecting on how to move beyond an easy to adopt token of support to more substantive engagement with the challenges of working effectively across generations.

4. Looking Forward: The 2012 Forum

AWID will dedicate its next international Forum to contribute to the search for feminist alternatives for just, sustainable development, prompted by the current financial crisis and economic recession. Clearly, the neoliberal economic model is collapsing under its own weight, and the world is in search of an alternative. Unfortunately, past experience indicates that at such times, the alternatives tend to take two forms: a return to past formulas, revamped slightly but without fundamentally questioning the power dynamics at play; or, bold new designs that completely ignore the perspectives, role, and contribution of women to the economic life and wellbeing of their societies. Can we, as feminists, seize the moment and offer genuinely feminist alternatives? Can we help governments, multilateral institutions, and societies create a new economics where people, and especially women, really matter? Feminists everywhere—activists, economists, researchers—have a unique opportunity to meaningfully contribute in the shaping of the world’s economic future.

The rich experience, insights and lessons generated during the 2008 Forum have stimulated a bold and exciting vision for AWID’s next Forum—one that positions the Forum not only as an event but as a broader process. Forum 2012 will have a revised structure and format that we hope will contribute to making it the most politically informed and substantive Forum yet, while also continuing to expand the diverse and inclusive nature of the space. An important difference will be the use of key “sub-themes” as an organizing structure for the Forum. We want the Forum to be a space for feminist popular economic education for those who want it, and for others, a space that indulges not just in analysis of the problem, but in advancing alternative approaches and gaining strategic and political support for these.

To prepare for and facilitate more substantive and strategic engagement of participants at the Forum, AWID is designing a comprehensive preparatory process that will include many of the aspects of our traditional Forum planning (such as the establishment of an International Planning Committee, a call for session proposals, and of course key program components like the plenaries) as well as:

• Alliance-building with groups doing work related to the Forum theme, to help us frame content around particular Forum “sub-themes” and identify other meetings or opportunities in the lead-up to the Forum where related conversations could be advances and so that the Forum builds on many of the debates in progress.
• Special outreach to allies in other social movements to broaden the analysis and experience informing the Forum’s conceptualization, motivate their participation in the process, identify complementarities in our agendas and prepare key conceptual inputs for the Forum.
• Prepare select background papers as part of an intentional knowledge-building strategy leading up to the Forum, so that key analytical materials and strategic possibilities are available to participants before the event, allowing the Forum itself to become a space for debating these and building consensus around shared advocacy and action agendas in the post-Forum period.
• An economic education process: Economics and finance are themes often perceived by women’s rights activists as either too complex or too distant to be part of their spheres of action (for the 2008 Forum, only 30 of the more than 1,000 session proposals received related to economic development themes.) AWID will work with allies to host specific training sessions on economics and development from a women’s rights and feminist perspective, in key international venues (such as the CSW B+15 reviews for example), disseminating periodic materials and information in different languages through our e-lists and website, among others. This process will also be supported by specific skills-building sessions organized at the forum.
• A working group to take a closer look at how feminist pedagogy and methodologies can shape a more effective Forum, and contribute to improve the quality of the break-out sessions and other key program components.

The work of AWID’s Influencing Development Actors and Practices (IDeA) initiative will play a strong role in shaping the next Forum. IDeA will lead the development of the pre-Forum economic education process and is already engaging partners on debates around development paradigms and feminist approaches, commissioning papers to understand the impact of the current crisis on women around the work, as well as sectoral papers related to the impact of the crisis in key sectors.

In addition to the refinements being made to the Forum preparatory process and program, AWID is making a significant change in the Forum timing. Traditionally, Forums take place every three years, towards the end of the year. Under a normal schedule, the next Forum would have been in October 2011. However, we have decided to change the date of the Forum, responding to a long-standing timing conflict with the periodic Feminist Encuentro, a vital regional meeting of Latin American and Caribbean feminists which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in late 2011. We believe this date change carries significant advantages for the Forum—giving us more time for the preparations, but also by shifting the Forum to the northern spring of 2012, we hope that participant schedules would be less packed than they invariably are at the close of a year.

At this time, Forum 2012 is about two years away. There is much to be done to fulfill our vision of what this space, and the process leading up to it, can accomplish. It is again a privilege and an honour to organize such an event. We look forward to your engagement in the process and hope to see you in Turkey in 2012!