Become a Board Member of OurMoment Inter-university Movement at the first planning meeting
Thurs. Nov. 17, 6:00-7:30, Georgetown University

The goals for this meeting are to
· Form a planning committee to create the OurMoment Conference 2006
· Decide how we will use the technology that we have to create means for MDG-specific intercampus communication and coordination
· Mobilize around national student-led conferences that are coming up this Spring, such as the conference for Child Survival, AIDS, Human Trafficking and Darfur.

RSVP to ourmoment@gmail.com by midnight, Tues. Nov. 15 if you will attend. Dinner will be provided to all students who attend this meeting. A detailed email will be sent out Wednesday morning to all who have signed up to attend the planning meeting.

**Free entrance to the World Children’s Day Dinner (see below) will also be available on a first come/first serve basis to students who attend the meeting. This requires a separate RSVP, however. Please see below!**

Attend the 3rd Annual World Children’s Day Dinner
November 17, 2005 7:30-9:30 Georgetown University; Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by UNICEF/SCCS-Georgetown, the World Children's Day dinner will bring together professionals from fields that all support issues that make a difference in the lives of children both domestically and internationally. UNICEF/SCCS-Georgetown uses this occasion to invite leaders from the conference to reunite to discuss collaboration for the future and progress made on campuses throughout DC.

RSVP required ASAP as spaces are limited, learn how to RSVP by clicking here

Notes from selected workshops are now viewable online. Please feel free to check up on the workshops you could not attend. This will serve as a great resource for people who could not attend the conference.

view workshop notes >>>

By Ann Koppuzha
Special to The HoyaFriday, October 14, 2005;

Students from area universities convened in the Intercultural Center on Saturday as Georgetown played host to "Our Generation, Our Responsibility," a conference promoting the Millennium Development Goals outlined by the United Nations.

The conference was open to the general public and featured workshops on the Millennium Development Goals, a series of proposals outlined by the U.N. to eradicate world poverty by 2015. Participants also had the chance to meet with approximately 25 non-governmental organizations, including Bread for the World and the African Immigrant & Refugee Foundation.
The Millenium Campaign, a U.N. initiative to raise awareness of the Millenium Development Goals in the United States, awarded the conference a $4,000 grant.

Amanda Gant (SFS '07), the coordinator of the conference, said that contacting students from other universities and bringing them to campus was the most difficult part of planning the conference.

"It was really hard for me to reach out and find people at other universities to be workshop coordinators," she said. "We ended up doing that by reaching out to student groups such as AIDS group chapters."

Gant began exploring the idea of holding a conference to raise awareness of the Millenium Deveolopment Goals this spring, and began planning shortly thereafter. She said that her primary motive for organizing this conference was to bring people together.

Becky Bavinger (COL '06) and Caroline Pang (SFS '07) helped Gant organize the conference.

"Becky, Amanda and Caroline put their heart and souls into [the conference]," said conference participant Surabhi Mathur (MSB '06). "Because of them the conference ran so smoothly."

Tracy O'Dowd, the leader of Amnesty International at Catholic Univeristy, moderated a workshop on hunger and poverty and said that it was a success.

"It went very well," O'Dowd said. "A lot of people came out. We had informative exercises and dicussions."

Gant said she was impressed by the enthusiasm and the exchange of ideas between participants. "People were really trying to be impacted in a deep way. People were really enthusiastic," she said.

Bavinger said she was impressed by the conference?s keynote speaker, Carol Bellamy, president and CEO of World Learning and former executive director of UNICEF.

"[Bellamy] was amazing and we had some people ask really intelligent questions," Bavinger said.
Georgetown UNICEF president Jaqueline Smith (COL '06), who assisted Gant in organizing the conference, also said she appreciated Bellamy's insights about her own experience.

"She addressed how powerful youth can be... I admire her dedication to the cause and the fact that she worked in both the private and public sector," Smith said.

Gant said that the most important aspect of the conference was the cooperation that it encouraged between service groups because so often people feel conflicted by their loyalities to various service organizations.

"The cooperation brings a different element to service and advocacy culture," Gant said. "Our Moment is really transpantable to other campuses, and what we hope to do is work together to set up a template at Georgetown and transplant it to other campuses."

Courtesy of The Hoya
Tuesday, September 27, 2005

The Luncheon will prove to be a great time to meet and network with 35 Organizations from the DC area. Link up with a network of student activists, include activities from an organization in your club's agenda, pick up resources that will inform you about the issues and how you can excersize you agency as a student.

Workshop descriptions have just been posted today. Click here to read about all the workshops. This information will help participants decide which workshop they will attend.

The "Our Generation, Our Responsibility" Conference is made possible in a large part by the Millennium Campaign. The Millennium Campaign hopes thier support will help students foster student activism, unity and advocacy.

90 students pre-registered in the 2 days prior to the launch of ourmoment.org, thanks to the work of the Our Moment publicity team. In a conference that is limited to the first 350 participants, this signals a need for students to register now in order to be included in the conference!