A leaders meeting took place in Paris the 24th February 2006. A number of very important deadlines should be noted:

*The next round of Activity Reports with payment claims is due 31st March 2006
*Thematic Expert Applications – for those who still have some days of expertise available, the deadline for sending application forms for these days is fixed at 31st March 2006
*New Member States / Accession and Neighbouring Countries – for those who have not yet requested participation of these cities as experts please note the deadline for doing so is fixed at 31st March 2006
*Refunding for attendance at meetings – please refer to previous messages from Anne Christine Lantin concerning outstanding requests for refund the deadline for claiming these is fixed at 31st March 2006
*Reprogramming round 6 – deadline 30th April 2006

Leaders meeting in Paris

2.1. MAIN SEMINARS AND EVENTS CELEBRATED UP TO DATE

10th – 13th June 2004	First General Assembly in Aarhus.
11th – 13th November 2004	Second working Group – WG 2 – Turin
11th – 14th November 2004	Second working group seminar – WG 3 – Graz
3rd- 5th March 2005	Second working group seminar – WG 1 – London
18th – 19th March 2005	Third working group seminar – WG 2 – Charleroi
26th – 29thMay 2005	Second General Assembly Charleroi
26th September 2005	Project Leaders meeting in Paris
27th September 2005	Project Leaders Certification bodies meeting in Paris.
28th September 2005	CITIZ@MOVE Expert's meeting in Belgium to prepare the capitalisation work with the attendance of Macarena Ybarra as CITIZ@MOVE coordinator.
13th-15th october 2005	Fifth working group seminar - WG 2 - Valenciennes.
27th-30th october 2005	Forth working group seminar - WG 3 - Cosenza.
14th-15th november 2005	Urbact Cities Conference - Liverpool.
15th december 2005	Meeting between the General Coordinator and the General expert to discuss about the final CITIZ@MOVE product format - Louvain.
19th december 2005	Charleroi Working Group technical meeting - Brussels.
12th january 2005	Charleroi working group will meet with Macarena Ybarra as General coordinator to foresee the new reprogramation
20th-21st january 2006	CTWG on the role of inhabitants in urban public management will focus on the topic: “Citizen Participation and Social Exclusion”. Malmø
25th january 2006	AARHUS LOCALWORKSHOP. 8th local workshop . Gudrunsvej 3a, 8220 Brabrand.
2nd-4th february 2006	Charleroi Working group seminar - Brussels
9th february 2006	Final deadline to submit the project reprogramation.
24th February 2006	Lead Partner Meeting- Paris (France)

2.2. WORKING GROUP 1

Case Studies undertaken by Gera:

A. Practice Bridge Building Between Citizens – A project by the Intercultural Association Gera

Open socio-cultural meeting place for all age and population groups with the focus on supporting the integration of migrants and the living-together of migrants and local residents.

The main objectives can be summarised as:
- Address existing deficits in tolerance between local population and residents with migration background
- Support intercultural encounters and platforms for meeting and getting-to-know
- Support migrants in their social and professional integration and combat social exclusion
- Involve migrants as actors and initiators

The Key Lessons to be drawn from practice implemented are:
- Word-of-mouth advertising more effective than press work: good results spread and persons get attracted who had no previous contact with the issue
- Core group of regular participants is important, while always welcoming new members
- Project work = neighbourhood work: initiatives for the integration of migrants need to be embedded in neighbourhood initiatives for ALL
- Focus on neighbourhood - not the entire city - allows more tailor-made offerings
- Success of initiatives also depends on the degree of involvement of migrants and locals as active participants

B.“RefugeeLife” Reports from Gera A project by DiakonieSocial Service for Refugees in co-operation with the City Administration of Gera

In 2002, the project “Organzing social work for refugees in a network” started. Within this work, the idea to create the book “RefugeeLife” in a network of refugees and original citizens of Gera has developed on the insight that there is a strong need for bridge-building between citizens, to show the daily struggling process of refugees and contribute to a better understanding between refugees and original inhabitants. At first, an exhibition – “I just wanted to be treated like a human” - has been prepared. The overwhelmingly positive reaction to the exhibition encouraged to develop the project further and to create a book of reports, stories and lyrics by refugees from different countries of origin accompanied by photographs. Additional information was given on the countries of origins and the asylum right in order to create further understanding of the refugees’ situation.

The Key Lessons to be drawn from practice implemented are:

- It needs a lot of time to develop a network. One has to create trust and patience to step over difficulties and challenges together.
- One needs a stable network to reach publicity.
- In Social work it is very important to make publicity to reach a great lobby. Social workers have to learn new instruments of P.R. work.

C.Interreligious Dialogue

Representatives of different religious groups in Gera invite to a public dialogue of religions on a regular basis. Every year, three thematic events take place. For the thematic events, the participants have defined rules, such as “to listen is more important that to speak”, differences can be recognize as a value” and “be open to others”.

The main Objectives of project is to contribute to a living together in partnership of people of different beliefs in Gera.

The Key Lessons to be drawn from practice implemented are:
- Prejudices can be minimized by information about the contents of the beliefs, by integrating authentic writings and representatives of the religions and by providing a platform for personal contact.

Gera City

2.3. WORKING GROUP 2

During our last seminar in Brussels (February 2006), the participative project “The books – say it to act” has been presented. There was a lot of interesting discussions and sharing of experiences from this presentation.

We propose here the powerpoint presentation about this project in Point n° 6 of this Newsletter. For further informations, please contact Mrs Liliane Cocozza Vice-President of ESAN Network. 00 32 2 512 92 96.

Next step of our working group’s work : an extra meeting in Sambreville and La Louvière on 6-7 of June. We’ve decided :

- to work on final product (grids, evolution of the project, synthesis, innovating projects) with thematic experts B. Francq and B. Declève
- to visit some projects and learn social practices of our partners La Louvière and Sambreville.

Mrs Liliane Cocozza presentation during the Charleroi working group meeting in Brussels –
February 2006

2.4. WORKING GROUP 3

Important Note for the working group partners: The Next working group seminar date has been changed and the meeting will be celebrated from 1st to 4th July in Athens.

The current state of the project concerning the IT TOOL: “NEW TECHNOLOGIES & ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP” is the following:

The CITIZ@MOVE IT Tool for citizens participation will be available during the month of April.
 
This tool will be continuously updated and improved. The first testing pilot projects with end-users will be developed in the cities of Seville and Toledo, the 18 and 25 April respectively, with the aim of presenting the main evaluation results during the next CITIZ@MOVE meeting which will take place in Athens.
 
The tool will be running under the Operating System LINUX (version Ubuntu 5.10), making use of high quality software and applications: APACHE (version 1.3), MySQL (version 4.0.24), PHP4 and DRUPAL that is an open source content manager. It is of utmost importance to emphasize that all the software used to develop this platform is free of charge, known as Free or Open-source Software.

The partners´ collaboration will be required in order to translate the main elements and information of this tool into the CITIZ@MOVE project languages.

Finally, from this example, The University of Madrid and Seville will prepare other partners cities that will be able to undertake also a pilot project with citizens. A pilot project will be prepared in Greece for the next working group meeting in July 2006

Principal page of the Citiz@move IT tool ‘New technologies and active participation”

- Aalborg as CITIZ@MOVE partner will organize a practical course in their city where you can see, try and debate different ways to work with integration and citizens participation under the theme: Citizens participation and integration. Words are not enough, action is needed!. Aalborg wants to share with CITIZ@MOVE partners and other cities interested why they have success ! (See Point 4 and 6 for more information)

- WEB PAGE: Aarhus as web masters of the CITIZ@MOVE project requires from CITIZ@MOVE partners the information requested by the project coordinator. You can have direct access to the project web page http://www.urbact.org/citizmove

4.1.CITIZ@MOVE PARTNER INVITATION

19TH – 24TH June 2006

Practical course “Citizens participation and integration. Words are not enough, action is needed!”. Aalborg (Denmark) . (See full invitation in point 6 – text)

4.2. MAIN CITIZ@MOVE COMING EVENTS

6th – 7th June 2006

Charleroi working group meeting – Sambreville – La Louviere (Belgium)

9th – 10th June 2006

CTWG about tools and methods of participation, with various forms of interaction and communication – Valencia (Spain).

1st – 4th July 2006

Seville working group meeting – West Athens (Greece)

4.3. OTHER CONFERENCES OR MEETING

30th – 31st March 2006

URBAN Action Congress”. The URBAN Action congress will present and discuss the concrete preparations and plans for the URBAN mainstreaming and the urban dimension within different EU Member States. Graz undMaribor (Austria) (See full invitation in point 6 – text)

3rd -5th May 2006

European Conference on Urban Future 2.0. - Governance and Partnership - Stockholm (Sweden) . (See full invitation in point 6 – text)

19th– 20th May 2006

The 4th Thematic Seminar will deal with responses of cities to insecurity, in Prague (19-20 May 2006)

4th – 8th September 2006

Call for papers EGO V06 Fourth EGOV conference - The EGOV Conference Series intends to assess the state of the art in eGovernment and eGovernance and to provide guidance for research and development in this fast-moving field. The annual conferences bring together leading researchers and professionals from all over the globe and from many disciplines. Krakow (Poland)

2nd -3rd – 4th November 2006

Security, Democracy and cities – European Forum for Urban Safety - Saragossa (Spain) . See point 6 for more information

URBACT

http://www.urbact.org/citizmove

CIUDADES OCASIONALES

http://www.ciutatsocasionals.net/

FORO DE LA ADMINISTRACIÓN PÚBLICA ELECTRÓNICA

http://www.forumadministrationelectronique.com/public/page.tpl?rub=4233

- Aalborg Invitation to a practical course concerning the theme - Citizens participation and integration. [PDF]

- Invitation to the URBAN Action Congress. In Graz undMaribor -[PDF]

- Invitation to Urban Futures 2.0 Final - Governance and Partnership - Stockholm -[PDF]

- Invitation to the Security, Democracy and cities – European Forum for Urban Safety - Zaragoza (Spain)- [HTM]

- « To make the word free and alive » Experience lead in « participative budgets » Social Centre for Public Action – Brussels in cooperation with ESAN - Belgian Committee (2003/2004 - 2005)-[PDF]

- Empowering information and communication technologies in isolated areas : learning from the solar-net village in Honduras-[PDF]

- Le champ social et discursif des ONG dans l’internet-[PDF]

- A pui Voci –[PDF]

For subscription, and for any information you may require about the project, please send a mail to Macarena Ybarra to the following address: edpbruselas@skynet.be

We may introduce here NOTES, OBSERVATIONS And RELIABLE MAILS THAT PEOPLE SEND TO THE ACCOUNT.

Publisher

Francisco Javier PANDO SASTRE
Town planning Department,
Seville city council
fjps@urbanismo-sevilla.org

Sonja MIKKELSEN
The URBAN II secretariat
Programme Manager
sm@urban.aarhus.dk

Eric DOSIMONT
Centre Public d’Action Sociale de Charleroi
cpas.huysmanschantal@skynet.be

Coordinator

Macarena YBARRA
EDP
edpbruselas@skynet.be

 

Secretariat

Beatriz SALAS
Delegation of Public Participation
Seville City Council
jefser.pciudadana@sevilla.org

Francisco SIERRA CABALLERO
Latin American Centre of Digital Communication
Journalism Department I
University of Seville
fsierra@us.es