The World Comes To Nairobi

“Another world is possible”

By Anne C. Hoff, Director, MS Kenya

03. January 2007

For the first time in its history, the World Social Forum (WSF) will be held in Africa.  The 6^th edition of this important event will take place in Nairobi Kenya from January 20th to 25th 2007. 

WSF is a movement that seeks to offer progressive forces space for dialogue and engagement to advocate for social, political and economic justice.

To us in MS, this is a grand opportunity that is giving us yet another stride towards our vision “A world in peace where cooperation among people promotes global equity and ensures improved conditions for poor and marginalized”.  It is in particular an opportunity to display and explain our focus on democracy and get inspiration to further our programmes within the focus.  The forum also offers all MS partners and country offices a great opportunity to share experiences and make joint plans for future activities and campaigns on common issues such as unfair trade.

Support from MS Kenya towards this important event has been through our partnership with Kenya Social Forum (KSF). Through this partnership we believe we can bring our efforts together and fight the bondage of poverty, human rights abuse, discrimination and unfair trade.   MS Kenya has therefore given both financial and technical support to KSF and has placed five development workers to work with WSF 2007 in various capacities.   

The Forum offers MS globally, country offices and partner organisations a stage to unleash their human creativity to guarantee the poor the chance to undertake responsibility to establish their own human dignity.

MS will be strongly represented on the WSF. Six country offices together with more than 20 partners will be present at WSF. This gives MS and its partners a unique possibility to be visible and demonstrate the variety of development activities we are doing together for fighting poverty and promote global equity.

MS Kenya will participate with exhibition of three stalls and we will organise activities on democracy, good governance and human rights. 

This special edition of Partnernews is a join publication between\different MS programme countries. The reader will find that seven MS country programmes have contributed with articles addressing different issues and challenges when it comes achieve social, political and economic justice.

The WSF is a time when the world comes together to discuss strategies to attain social justice and a great opportunity for all of us to participate.