EDITORIAL No.2                                           

Dear Friends of the Encuentro:    

      Three weeks after opening on line registration for the V Encuentro, we are surprised at the level of interest in participating on behalf of so many members of community organizations and academia institutions. At this point we want to make sure you get a sense of the nature of this particular Encuentro so that you can shape your expectations accordingly.

      This time around, the main goal will be to strengthen the network of actors who, on behalf of civil society are devoted to moving the environmental agenda on the border region. The process which has been designed to help us achieve that consists of the following parts: Border Environmental Bazaar, Panel of Experts, Thematic Tracks, Institutional Capacity Workshops, Regional round tables and the presentation of the Declaration.

      The “Border Environmental Bazaar” consists of a tour along a map – mural which displays information about environmental organizations, projects and collaborations working on the border and a poster session where participants will exchange information about the action and research projects in the border region.

      The simultaneous theme tracks will serve for us to discuss environmental issues around the themes of: water, border security, urban development and pollution and health. We will begin with a panel of experts and continue with a session in which we will collectively identify the achievements, challenges, voids and opportunities for community groups to act in regard to these theme areas.

      The institutional capacity workshops are critical for identifying the strategies we will be using to strengthen our work through successful communications campaigns, alternatives for fundraising, strategies for building multicultural community-based partnerships and access to environmental information and transparency. Finally we will form regional round tables by geographic location where we can prepare the “Rosarito Declaration”, designed to help articulate commitments for future actions by the environmentalist community on the border.

      We hope you will register soon because there are few partial fellowships left and we do have limited capacity for a total of 200 participants. So that you may be ready to participate, please respond to the survey we will be sending you and be sure to choose one of the four track themes that appear on the agenda and prepare your poster to share with others.

The V Encuentro is our opportunity to work on joint strategic action.

Regards,

The Secretariat
V Meeting on the Border Environment