Wow, my first ever blog post!
Oxford Hub has just asked me to promote their annual conference, the Oxford Forum for International Development (OxFID) 2009, on February 7th and 8th in the Said Business School. It's priced at £14 for the whole conference weekend (including two lunches), and they welcome participants from all disciplines and levels of experience, both students and non-students. You can find out more and book on the Oxford Hub website. The theme of the conference will be "Creative Solutions to Urgent Problems". They say it like this:
"The world is approaching a crisis point. Run-away climate change and the global food crisis will continue to be exacerbated as population expands to over 9 billion people by the year 2050. A global financial crisis is reshaping the way the world's economy works. Epidemics of infectious diseases are spreading throughout the world and fresh water supplies are under threat. Slow change is no longer acceptable, urgent action is needed. OxFID 2009 aims to investigate fully the impact of all these factors on developing nations and to bring together some of the world's leading academics, creative thinkers, and NGOs to encourage debate and precipitate solutions."
People who went last year spoke very highly of it. This year's speakers include:
- Dr Andrew Steer, Director of General Policy and Research at DFID
- Aubrey Meyer, Director of the Global Commons Institute and listed by the New Statesman as 'one of the 10 people most likely to save the world'
- Dr Kevin Watkins, Director of the UN Human Development Report Agency
- Lord Robert May, former President of the Royal Society former Chief Scientist to DFID and the U.K. Government
- Benedict Southworth, Director of the World Development Movement
- Robert Annibale, Global Director of Citigroup microfinance
- John Hillary, Director of War on Want
- Oliver Cumming, Head of Policy at Wateraid
- Sam Bickerseth, Head of Programme Policy at Oxfam
- Professor David Rogers, University of Oxford, and advisor to the E.U. on climate change and infectious diseases
There you go, I've done it!
I went to this and found it a very informative and motivating day. I came away newly enthusiastic about climate change campaigning and getting more and more people on board with campaigning in general. I particularly enjoyed the talk by a young campaigner trained by Oxfam who asked us what our barriers to successful campaigning were and went through and tackled each one, turning them into positives. Here are some of her top tips (from the Futerra website):
ReplyDelete1. It's not about the future - climate change is affecting people NOW, so don't take this as an excuse.
2. Have 5 killer facts at your fingertips, that you know will be relevant to your audience.
3. Be cool and mainstream climate change campaigning.
4. You're not alone - you're part of an ever-growing climate change movement.
5. Tell stories - Oxfam's 'Sisters on the Planet' DVD will help you with this.
6. Talk about the positives rather than what people aren't allowed to do. Green jobs, energy for the future, healthy living, having fun.
7. Champion individual actions - they do make a difference.
8. Change is for ALL - a truly mass movement.
9. We need more heroes / leaders of the movement.
10. Start with converting your personal circle and widen from here.
Happy campaigning!