This is one individual's account of the World Social Forum 2005. Here one sees the inter-disciplinary way social issues are tackled and the building of bridges in the social sector, an early take of the social innovation movement.
OECD Webinar - ESG to deliver well-being in resource-rich regions: the role o...
2005- Anamaria at the World Social Forum
1. My Experience at the World Social Forum
Anamaria Aristizabal
February, 2005
When I came back from the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre Brazil, I hit the
ground running. I am doing a Master’s degree in Environmental Management at Yale,
and missing a week of school is enough to snatch one’s peace of mind. Although getting
back has been stressful, I am not even close to sorry to have gone to the WSF. In fact, I
will make it a point to attend to the future WSF whenever possible.
The original reason that led me there was to learn from other social movements (other
than the environmental movement, which I am part of), and build bridges between them.
I feel that many progressive movements work in isolation, and not enough synergies are
created to advance our causes. We have much in common, but we often do not realize it,
because the language that we use is different and because the focus diverges. However,
our underlying values and visions are very compatible.
One of the most exceptional things that I found at the Forum was the variety of
movements present, coexisting under the same umbrella. This is notable because today it
is rare to find an event that hosts so many different perspectives, perhaps with the
exception of the Earth Summits (at Rio and Johannesburg). There were people devoted to
movements ranging from labor, Fair Trade, democracy, and human rights to
environmentalism, spirituality, and the arts. Yet despite this wide scope of interests, all
the groups shared fundamental commonalities: a desire to question the existing order, to
envision a new one, and to implement that new vision.
For me this has a special significance, as all my life I have felt torn between my
environmental, social, economic, spiritual, and artistic interests. I felt that I was a
confused rarity in a society of focused, specialized individuals. This feeling has lessened
as I read about systems thinking and holistic thought, realizing that no systemic problem
(such as poverty, violence, or environmental degradation) will be solved with a technical,
one-dimensional solution. More integral and holistic solutions are needed, solutions that
take into account multiple aspects of human nature. I felt this spirit at the WSF, and as I
went from the cluster of economic tents, to the environmental ones, to the human rights
ones, to the spiritual ones, I felt invigorated, reconnected with forgotten parts of myself,
and felt more whole.
The WSF was a democratic exercise. Although there was an organizational panel that
makes certain important decisions, I felt that at the WSF every person had a voice. Each
workshop was designed and organized by the participants, and needed no permissions or
supervisions of any kind. In spite of technical and logistical difficulties, there were
hordes of translator volunteers to bridge nationalities. There were spaces provided at the
end of the day to write proposals at each of the cluster of tents, for WSF organizers to
collect and assemble. There were plenty of opportunities to protest, to give pamphlets, to
raise awareness of issues.
2. At the WSF, I gave a talk on becoming a “global citizen” at a panel organized by the
Great Transition Initiative, a network that I am part of (GTI- www.gtinitiative.org). I was
asked to share my personal experience on the topic, and since I found the funding to go
the WSF through Yale University, I was also representing it. I talked about the
Environment School’s efforts to become a global school, comparing them with similar
efforts in Colombian universities and underlining the important role of universities to
shape global citizens. This was a challenging topic for me, and I don’t think I did it
justice. I was walking on delicate terrain by saying that universities are critical in shaping
global citizens, since so many people do not have access to post-secondary education in
the developing world. I also felt terribly out of place sharing the experiences that have
enlivened my desire to become a global citizen (which include travel and access to an
overseas education), as well as the steps Yale has taken to become a global school.
Talking about my background and my affiliation to Yale, I felt as though I had the word
“PRIVILEDGE” taped to my forehead, something that does not click well at the anti-neo-
liberal WSF. But an interesting discussion followed, and the experience was the
beginning of important reflections for me. Perhaps I had been talking more about being a
cosmopolitan person than about being a global citizen. I spoke of developing
understanding and connections with other cultures and global issues. Now I wish I had
spoken more about the responsibilities implied by the concept of a “global citizen.”
Sometimes at the WSF I felt solidarity both with causes on the other side of the world or
as well as with those that affect me directly. Other times I felt clueless and lost, and
aware of how much I don’t know, and how isolated I am in a world of homogeneity and
uniformity. The clearest example of this was the issue of Chavez. In some other realms of
my life, the opinion of my colleagues and acquaintances has been overwhelmingly
negative regarding the Venezuelan President. At the WSF, however, Chavez was a rock
star, attracting more than 15,000 people to his talk at the stadium. At more than one of the
workshops I went to, I heard the affirmation “Chavez is the hope of Latin America.” To
move from one sphere of strident opinion to another was simply disheartening. Although
I welcome the challenge to reconsider my political assumptions on an issue like this
(about which I know little), it was discouraging overall. On both sides of this ideological
conflict, there is a great intolerance for diversity of opinion. And isn’t diversity of
opinions, ideas, and approaches what an event like this is supposed to be about?
My notion of wealth was also challenged. I went to a “social currency” workshop, where
it was argued that communities can take more advantage of their own internal resources
through the use of alternative currencies. The idea is that they depend less on external
actors that bring jobs or money, and more on their own wealth. This ultimately depends
on whether one has a “scarcity paradigm” or an “abundance paradigm.” This means that
any given person or community can concentrate on what one doesn’t have versus what
one does have, and that has a significant impact on the quality of life. With an abundance
paradigm, one starts to see the world according to what we do have, and what we can do.
We realize that we are wealthy—not necessarily monetarily wealthy, but wealthy in
many other ways. Each person is endowed with gifts and abilities that he or she can put in
service to the community in exchange for other services.
3. These ideas of abundance and scarcity paradigms touched me, because sometimes I feel a
sense of not having enough, both materially and spiritually. I sometimes feel that I don’t
have enough resources to make the change that I want to make in the world. That day, at
that workshop, along with all the other participants, I made a commitment to develop,
each day, the paradigm of abundance in my life, to be able to appreciate, enjoy, and use
for the collective good the abundance of resources I have in my life, and realize that
every one of us, even if we don’t realize it, has much wealth to share.
How will I use what I learned? What do I do now? I am grateful for the experience of
having gone to the WSF, and I want to share this privilege by giving back to my
community in some way. There is much to be done, and while at school, little time.
However, my strengthened sense of global citizen responsibility gives new meaning to
my class field trip to the United Nations Environmental Program’s (UNEP) headquarters
in Nairobi, Kenya. During this trip, our class presenteed the findings of our assessment of
UNEP at their Governing Council meeting. We presented recommendations on how to
reinvigorate UNEP, our global environment organization, in which every citizen of the
world has a stake. This starts to seem more like a global citizen action.
I also recently organized a workshop at Yale called “Vision for Sustainability,” guided by
Manuel Manga, a leadership coach and expert on visioning processes. The goal of this
workshop was to provide a space for Yale students to develop their vision for a better
world in ways that go beyond single disciplines. Orion Kriegman, the GTI Organizer
gave us the framework for the exercise by presenting us the different scenarios for the
planet’s future, one of which is sustainability. Sustainability can mean many different
things for different people, but it evokes a future of quality of life at all levels, and all
kinds of wealth. Once the vision is clear, it’s a matter of bringing it to reality, day by day,
using all our abundant resources and wealth (not necessarily monetary), and the synergies
we build across movements and countries, to prove that what the WSF declares is true:
“Another world IS possible”.