The Americas Social Forum 2004 took place in Quito, Ecuador on July 25-30, 2004. The Forum which is the continental version of the progressive World Social Forum opened in Quito with cultural events in the historic city centre. A conference on "Gender and Diversity" initiated the discussion and exchange process of the ASF.
"Communication and Culture" is one of the five thematic areas of the ASF. In that framework, APC participated in coalition with other communication networks as Latin American information agency ALAI, the community radio activists AMARC, ALER and Radipaz, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), and Latin American Catholic communicators (OCLACC) to raise awareness around the issue of communication rights.
A group of community networks that supports the CRIS Campaign, including APC, held an "Americas Communication Rights Meeting", one of the Forum’s main activities.
APC also offered a workshop on ICT policies and gender, as a joint initiative of the LAC ICT Policy Monitor and the Latin American network of the APC Women’s Programme (WNSP), with the support of APC member in Ecuador, INTERCOM.
APC members also attended the ASF. Paulo Lima, from RITS spoke on the first and principal panel on the Encounter for Communication Rights, following the Forum’s inauguration which included a keynote speech by Armand Mattelart. Other APC members participating were Olga Paz from Colnodo in Colombia, Elsa Duhagon (Choike Editor, from the Third World Institute (ITeM) in Uruguay, Sebastien Grenier of Alternatives in Canada and Diana Andrade and Lucía Torres from Ecuador.
APC members, CRIS national chapters representatives from Colombia and Bolivia and other CRIS members organizational representatives (from AMARC and ALER), reported daily during the Encounter.
More info and news in:
http://lac.derechos.apc.org (in Spanish)
http://www.movimientos.org/foro_comunicacion/encuentrocom_fsa (in Spanish)
http://www.crisinfo.org (in Spanish and English)