Targets: Why a development conference?
What we want: To offer a unique (social) space for fundamental reflection and development policy debate and to fill it with politically relevant content in dialogue.
1. Networking
The Development Conference is a meeting point for the development politics network; people from the most diverse fields of development work meet each other: NGO employees, committed activists, interested students, journalists, employees of public institutions … However, this networking also extends beyond the field of humanitarian aid and development policy and thus opens up a broad spectrum of perspectives. In particular, the Development Conference is an opportunity for development politics and the education sector to make contact and exchange. The ecology sector will also be addressed with regard to the topic of the transformation of the global order; however, the social sector will be addressed in particular with regard to the topic of the 2020 conference. The dialogue with actors from the economic sector also remains important. The aim is to cross the traditional boundaries between the milieu of development policy and implement new cooperation projects.
2. Media presence & public symbol
The Development Conference is an important sign of life to the outside world that there are many interested people and organisations behind the topic of development politics and humanitarian aid; this is also good for those who have been involved for years and who, through their broad participation, experience in concrete terms that they are „not the only ones“. Public presence can be motivating.
Here, however, one cannot expect miracles of presence in mainstream media. Development policy will remain a marginal topic of reporting there; it is therefore indispensable to do media work in the alternative area, whether via community radio and TV or via social media. In Upper Austria, Radio FRO and Dorf-TV as well as Medienwerkstatt Linz im Wissensturm are relevant; in Vienna, Radio Orange 94.0 and okto-TV.
Nevertheless, the conference makes development issues perceptible as such, also among politicians and other public stakeholders. In any case, the public relations work for the conference will be intensified in comparison with previous years.
3. Further development of content
The conference will enable participants and institutions involved, to further develop their own approaches and positions on fundamental aspects of development politics and humanitarian aid through a collective learning process. The Development Conference is a space for reflection on the many contradictions in which we find ourselves every day. This means that world developments are named and compared with existing knowledge, one’s own view of the world, in order to obtain new impulses for a more contemporary practice. The following subgoals are pursued:
- Supporting the political dialogue on fundamental questions of world development;
- Promoting visionary thinking and the exploration of alternative development paths;
- Encouraging the participants to realize their participation in social processes and decisions to a greater extent;
- Offering further education and critical examination of current and relevant changes in the framework conditions of development policy and development cooperation;
- Supporting development cooperation and development research in their dialogue.
Target groups: Who do we expect at the development conference?
The Development Conference is designed for about 300 people from different backgrounds: Environmental politics and development politics, students and practitioners meet each other.
Target groups of the development conference are:
- Employees of development policy institutions;
- Activists and sympathisers of development policy, globalisation-critical, environmental and social organisations and movements;
- persons interested in development and socio-political issues;
- public opinion leaders and decision-makers.
A little review: Participants at the 7th Development Conference 2017 in Graz
Video © Surya Knöbel
