FOCIR held its 23rd General Assembly on March 28th at SGAE-Catalonia’s Social Club. There were over 30 attendees hailing from its various member organisations.
The event began with the approval of last year’s General Assembly’s minutes as well as this year’s agenda, after which Sergi Perelló presented the first part of the 2018 Report by going over the federation’s goals:
- Internationalisation of member organisations
- Knowledge development and dissemination
- Public outreach to promote our member organisations and public diplomacy as well as to create discussion spaces
Following this, Mireia Plana reviewed the activities that were carried out in 2018 despite the continued effects resulting from the application of Article 155:
- Two International Breakfasts held in collaboration with the Barcelona Provincial Council (with Ramon Tremosa and Arnau Guix)
- Commissioning of the diplomacy booklets
- Publication of the 8th internationalisation case (about the Catalan PEN)
- Production of the first ten FOCIR Clips
Mònica Sabata then presented the ambitious 2019 Programme highlighting the importance of actively resuming activities and searching for funding opportunities. The programme, which was approved by the attending members, will consist of:
- Three International Breakfasts with the support of the Barcelona Provincial Council
- The publication of three working papers
- Twelve new FOCIR Clips
- A seminar on city diplomacy
- A seminar for sports organisations
- Free training sessions for our member organisations
- Updating the webpage and strengthening of its resources bank with the publication of the 9th internationalisation case about FEEC
- Evaluation of the possible 10th and 11th cases
- Certain projects will be resumed, such as a map of member organisations and their influence abroad
- A meeting of UN-recognised organisations
The 2019 Programme also envisions increasing membership by 10 organisations so that FOCIR can grow as the only federation that encompasses organisations that do public diplomacy.
