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At The Forum 2008 People & Planet members from up and down the country decided on a second campaign theme to run alongside climate change from 2009/10. After presentations from the proposers, small group work to analyse the weaknesses of their favourite campaign idea and large group discussion students voted to go for People and Planet before Profit. Read the full proposal as it was submitted.
This campaign theme will run from September 2009 and last for at least six years; it has the potential to make a huge difference in whatever it targets!
At next year’s Forum we will be discussing ideas for specific campaign strands within the second campaign theme. If you’ve already got some ideas for what these strands could be - and plenty came up in discussion at The Forum - please post them on the web forum to get the discussion started!
Definitions that might help you
Campaign theme: A broad theme or issue. Our current themes are Trade, HIV/AIDS and climate change. Themes can include several campaign strands. We will be voting on a new campaign theme for 2009/10 at The Forum 2008.
Campaign strand: A specific campaign within a bigger issue, such as Go Green and Ditch Dirty Development within climate change or Fairtrade and Redress Fashion within trade.
Students’ ideas
Students submitted 17 proposals for what our second campaign theme should be. The Management Committee met on 5 December 2007 to discuss them.
It was decided that in order to make the Forum weekend in March most productive, we would have to start with fewer than 17. The MC has proposed a reduced list of seven, and the proposers involved in these themes have been invited to get together to come up with amalgamated proposals.
The final seven proposals are shown in the table below.
Name of proposal |
Who made the proposal |
Summary of proposal |
Download more details on this proposal |
Share your thoughts on this proposal on the network run web forum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Food and Water Security |
Richard Hawting, Kristina Diprose, El Hadshar, and Farrah Zaman |
This deals with two of the most basic needs for human survival. It is already an issue that affects billions and this looks likely to grow and become ever more urgent. This is very much a global issue but there are a wide range of areas in which this can be campaigned on domestically and also focus on localising our own food and water consumption. |
||
Workers’ rights |
Ayah al-Zayat, Craig Griffiths, Anna Wolmuth, and Alex Wood |
The focus of the workers’ rights campaign theme is what we can do as students to support people fighting against exploitation and labour rights abuses, be that in the global south or here in the UK. |
||
Women, inequality and development |
Hannah Greenslade, Rosie Trobe, Elle Hadshar, and Lizzie Fellows |
This campaign theme would take a new and unique perspective on human rights and development campaigning. Too often women are neglected from development campaigns and studies; gender issues are frequently sidelined or de-prioritised. The proposed campaign theme would turn this on its head, taking women’s issues as priority and tackling issues of global poverty and human rights through this lens. |
||
Child Poverty |
Nick Chan, Ben Miller, and Emily Nicholl |
What about the kids? This broad theme could lead to a whole range of new and exciting campaign strands focusing on global injustices that have a disproportionate effect on children. A major strength of this proposal is that it can be campaigned on at many levels, from the very local to the international. |
||
Mining |
David Jarrett and Jo Hill. |
The aim is to prevent human rights abuses in the global south which are associated with the mining industry. This includes things such as resource wars and slavery associated with mining. It also includes “land grabbing” - people being kicked out of their homes and off their land to make way for corporate mining. |
||
Peace |
David Jarrett, Jo Hill, Sarah Holliday and Amanda Formisano |
War is bad. Peace is a fundamental human right of which many people in the world are robbed, and this is unacceptable. People & Planet can use its passionate and influential voice to seek a world of less violence by campaigning on matters where we can have an effect. |
||
People and Planet before Profit |
Anna Wolmuth and Sarah Waldron |
The campaign would demand that corporations are held accountable for their impact on people and planet, and for public policy to be based on meeting social needs, rather than delivering private profit. |
The Forum 2008 is supported by The Co-operative Membership
