Laura:
Experiencing such a well-prepared meeting was really inspiring for me (I know it might sound strange!). YFoEE meetings are often so quickly prepared, and I very much noticed and appreciated the amount of thought and work that went into preparing the agenda, the
workshops, discussions, the practicalities and funding people to get there.

I think every participant presented and facilitated some part of the agenda, as well as taking on roles such as time-keeping a note-taking. Amazing sharing of work both in preparation and running the gathering. I picked up and noticed so many tools to use in such an event, and i will make another page like this on the YFoEE network page where people can contribute, make comments and ask questions. I would like to use some such tools and techniques in planning the YFoEE network gathering in March 2011.

Although I got a little lost in the legal hub session (probably because I’m not actively working on creating national climate legislation), most of the sessions were fantastic.

Good sessions:

• Having updates from each group and their lessons learned. If a powerpoint presentation was used, no typed text was allowed. Really inspiring to hear how some groups are going so well in their campaign for national climate laws.

• Starting off discussions that we found difficult, such as adopting an anti-capitalist policy stance, climate refugees, and other issues that were part of the Cochabamba People’s Agreement: I have uploaded it to the CJWG wiki – it’s a good read, especially to highlight issues you don’t know anything about, also to think about what’s in there that you don’t agree with, and what are the underlying issues that would stop you campaigning on such a strong position.

• We had some simultaneous workshops on cross-cutting issues such as working with trade-unions, climate coalitions, businesses; offsetting; and working as mostly volunteers.
  NOAH (FoE Denmark) is completely volunteers!

*Mobilising around climate justice and how to commmunicate the idea

*Collecting climate testimonies

*Strategic objectives of FoEE climate team for 2011
We left several hours for this, split off into small groups and it still took longer than expected, and we were all happy to prioritise thinking and talking about this over other things. It was great to see YFoEE mentioned several times, underalliance and coalition building “including building stronger links with YFoEE”.

The Agenda changed more as we got further through the end, I suppose because issues were able to be prioritised better than could be done beforehand.

On the practical side, we had internet access which was very handy, and we had a groundrule of no laptops in meetings, which made things run better. Vegans, vegetarians and omnivores were catered for well and table football kept energy up in breaks :D

It was great having time to meet other campaigners in person, connecting faces to email addresses, meeting new people and getting to know much better those i’d met before.

It would have been better to have had a couple of sessions to talk generally with CJWG about issues and to think about what we need from FoEE, after having a look at the agenda, the cochabamba people’s agreement, and making a creative presentation together of our climate justice work from the last year. It would be great to have a little bit better preparation for 2011 campaigners meetings, including the campaigners meeting in Feb/Mar 2011 and the big happening in Oct 2011.