GCAP G8 Meeting
Berlin Communiqué
October 4-6, 2006

PREAMBLE

GCAP working group met in Berlin from October 4 to 6, 2006 to review previous collaborative activities and plans for 2007. Participants included representatives from national and regional platforms from Canada, US, UK, Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, EU, International organisations and Africa. The objectives of the meeting were:

•	Review actions and progress since 2005
•	Discuss Campaign Tools and Tactics
•	Discuss timeline and lobbying processes

The meeting featured wide ranging and vigorous discussions on ways of working, tools and strategies, as well as concrete actions to take forward in the lead up to the Summit in 2007. We learned from the German and Japanese coalitions their plans for advocacy around their respective summits. The main outcomes of the meeting were:

•	Reaffirmed the importance of timely information sharing on lobbying and intelligence around the G8 processes
•	The value of coordinating activities in G8 countries to maintain pressure on delivering and exceeding commitments made in previous summits
•	Reaffirmed the critical role of Southern participation in G8 advocacy processes and committed to take action to include Southern participation In upcoming activities
•	Agreed to build on and increase the effectiveness of the ways of working as a group
•	Identified effective tools for G8 advocacy and the need to support capacity building for G8 national platforms, including interactive websites, sign on letters, petitions, supporter databases, advertising, video footage, coordinated lobbying, rallies, and media stunts, among others
•	Identified priority activities and developed an agreed timeline for coordinated actions from October 2006 through to the summit in June 2007

The meeting has produced this communiqué to aid in the sharing of information both within G8 countries and with all other regions and constituencies of GCAP working on G8 advocacy. The meeting agreed to work within the Beirut advocacy platform. When plans for the GCAP month of action for 2007 are developed, G8 country coalitions will use this as a basis for 2007 planning and action.

COUNTRY UPDATE
We received a welcome address from Juergen Lieser, vice chair of VENRO, who welcome representatives from country platforms to Berlin. There was a round up of the political context and coalition news from each country platform and Africa region. See meeting notes for details.

REVIEW OF 2005 AND 2006

The group reviewed the past activities of the GCAP G8 Working Group over the past two years. These included joint-lobbying, lobbying letters, media events like the Post-it Note action in June 2006.  The group broke down the review into policy and lobbying, media, and campaigning and gave recommendations to help us in our planning in 2007 by improving on coordination and communication. 

Main points included:

•	Capacity is a major issue
•	Intelligence sharing is very good but needs greater clarity on decision-making on lobbying tactics.
•	Measuring impact and follow-up to the actions needs more attention.
•	Organising the information and sharing plans for others to use is critical.
•	Joint lobbying messages and press releases have been useful. 
•	There has been a real value to the decentralised approach and country coalition decision making on messages.
•	We need to tailor our messages to our target audiences.

See the main notes for the full list of points.

STRATEGIES AND TOOLS

We discussed presentations from four country coalitions on strategies and tools utilized in past campaigns: Canada (website), UK (paid and earned media), USA (email lists and databases), Japan (white bands). See meeting notes for more details.

LOBBYING

We had a discussion on lobbying techniques and lessons learned, and exchanged best practices on lobbying G8 sherpa offices and related ministries. Please see meetings notes for details. We discussed some of the possible calendar dates for joint action on lobbying and advocacy on policy. This fed into the calendar agreed in a later session.

JOINT ACTIONS FOR 2007

During the period from October to June, we plan the following activities in order to:

•	Influence the summit agenda & our national politicians
•	Make southern voices prominent
•	Make sure politicians feel the pressure coming from the public
•	Keep the public engaged & connected to each other - sense of global movement

We will continue to undertake several activities on an ongoing basis including intelligence sharing, using template lobby letters to finance ministers, G8 sherpas & heads of state, shaping messages/key policy demands (based on Beirut demands).

Building Momentum

Online Petition
The German coalition is already collecting online petition Voices against Poverty to the Chancellor, which will be launched on Oct 17th (tbc). This meeting asks GCAP to support this idea and make it a global action, with an optional mechanism where we can contact those that take part with further communications. We need to develop a technical understanding of how the data collecting will be both owned by and passed to the relevant national coalitions before National Coalitions can decide if they want to support this. This should be clarified by the end of October.

In November Deine Stimme gegen Armut will be launching an attempt to create the longest ever click ad so that it can be shown throughout the 3 days of the G8 summit. This meeting is asking GCAP to make  recording messages for this Click Ad an International action, technical suggestions should be sent to Uli and the Action Group will take this up. 

Official Civil Society Process
Deine Stimme gegen Armut will circulate information on the official civil society process once it is confirmed including the meeting in Bonn at the end of April. 

National Calendars 
Astrid will develop a global schedule of key policy moments for G8, each member country, key bilateral (such as Putin visiting Germany), UN, AU etc. events. 

White Bands
Mass distribution of white bands (and alternatives such as mobile phone tags) will vary from country to country, but to do it properly we need a long lead in time so countries need to determine what they want to do by the end of October and notify CIVICUS.

Website/Short Films
It was agreed as important to have updated country websites in place before the start of 2007, so for countries that are having a website should be updated by the end of November. It was agreed that we should have several short films nationally adaptable by name, language, policy demands, celebrities (where used) and website address. We will try and make several different films staggered over the next nine months and Japan plans to work on a film for 2008 (historical timeline and footage of G8 – e.g. from Gleneagles-St Petersburg-Heiligendamm-Kyoto?). 

Outreach
We agreed to encourage GCAP to do some outreach work to similar international coalitions on issues such as Climate Change so that we can mutually support each other for 2007 and 2008. National coalitions are encouraged to approach relevant national groups.

Campaign Calendar
The following calendar was agreed dependent on resources and discussion within countries. 

October: German cabinet meeting

We will:

•	Release a statement/press release giving GCAP response (following GCAP teleconference with small task force), with in particular strong German and African perspectives – Oct 18th. More considered piece within a week with reactions on the decision.
•	Launch 'Your Voices' petition in Germany 
•	Decide whether to request Finance Ministers/ Celebrities visit Africa
•	Decide whether to request Merkel to visit Africa

January: New Year
•	Stunt with 'New Year's Resolution' theme, (suggest it as a theme for WSF launch?)
•	Paid adverts using same creative idea
•	Open letter signed by famous economists: "the sums will work if you want them to" (maybe with a link to Davos?)

February: Finance Ministers meeting
•	Webcast debate between finance ministers & activists (from North and South)
•	Asks ACP council of Ministers and other similar meetings to produce a declaration to the G7 Finance Ministers Group on Poverty and Inequality 

May: Finance Ministers meeting; EU Council meeting; G8 Sherpas meeting
•	Publish peoples' advert (an advert listing the names of who signed the petition)
•	Lobby tours by southern activists to lobbying before all 3 political opportunities. The Action group will develop a plan for discussion with other GCAP regions.

June: G8 summit

There is a key moment before the actual summit - 5/6 June before leaders head off to Germany. G8 leaders need to be influenced through and by their own constituencies before they leave for the summit. Decentralized joint action is needed as a reminder that constituencies have expectations for G8 leaders to deliver at the summit. 

Final Push
Objectives:
•	Leaders feel pressure of their constituencies to deliver
•	Activists get engaged - north & south come together

Messaging: 
Need to take into account state of agenda by this time. 

Actions (done within a theme : 'Global phone call' - this is the most important call you'll ever make - speak directly to your leaders; leave them a message - tell them what you want from the summit.):
•	Send-off actions in national capitals is key around 5th June
•	Some activity - maybe virtual - where activists in G8 countries & beyond can feel part of what's going to happen in Germany
•	'Longest click film'

WAYS OF WORKING

After some discussion it was agreed for the main group to meet every two weeks for one hour. 

We need to have a timetable of the meetings

We will invite colleagues from other regions of GCAP to join the working group.

We have a sub-group to develop actions that should focus on developing the actions agreed by the main group.

There should be a task group to do the immediate response and more considered analysis for the statement for Oct 18th.  GCAP International Facilitation Team and Africa Facilitation Team will be asked to suggest people for this group and we will mention the importance of this. The group will be led by Deine Stimme gegen Armut and will include Astrid, Luca, Birte and Kirsty, Dennis. They will:
•	Prepare a factual statement followed by some quotes from different GCAP constituencies and countries. 
•	They will do a longer internal lobbying analysis of the response for consideration by the main group within a week. 

The activities should be reported in the GCAP International Facilitation Team by someone who is on both groups.

A webpage for GCAP G8 coalition work shall be set up on www.whiteband.org A mailing list should be set up for the G8 coalitions list of e-mail addresses and we should look at online groups. 

We should translate key documents into all of the languages for the GCAP G8 coalitions where possible this should be done by professional translators and reviewed by media leads in the relevant country.

JAPAN 2008

Hottenkenai gave a presentation to the meeting to up-date the GCAP G8 Working Group on the plans and activities in Japan in preparation for the 2008 G8 Summit. 

The main aims of the work for the G8 are to:

•	Ensure that poverty related issues on 2008 Summit, produce a ‘Real MDG8’ – shadow Report. Establish functional participation with Japanese Government.
•	Increase public awareness on poverty in Japan, which is relatively low.
•	To have a historic civil society movement.

Hottenkenai have created a new organizational structure with missions statement, strategy and plans of actions. 2006 is a key year to lay the foundation of campaign to allow 2007 for scaling up the activities for 2008.  The NGO community is already active in the G8 preparations and GCAP people have participated in a planning meeting already. 

The meeting discussed how the GCAP G8 Working Group can assist the Japanese coalitions in preparing for 2008 including organizing a ‘hand-over’ event of the G8 Presidency from Germany to Japan at the beginning of 2008.  The meeting agreed to share information on the Japanese G8 plans and to organize a face-to-face meeting of the GCAP G8 Working Group in Japan July 2007 to strategise for the Japanese G8 meeting

DEINE STEIME GEGEN ARMUT
Many thanks for the Deine Steime gegen Armut coalition for hosting the meeting.