CAMBRIDGE WORLD DEVELOPMENT GROUP – MINUTES For 15 June 2005

Minutes of the meeting held at 19:45 on Wednesday 15 June 2005 at Aidan & Clare’s.

PRESENT: Clare (Chair), Aidan, Beth, Frank, Rachel, Sheila, Pat, Sue (Secretary)

APOLOGIES : Ray, Fabiola, Paul, Martin

1. MINUTES for meeting 20 April 2005 approved as May meeting was the AGM.

Matters Arising

A) Fairtrade Guide to Cambridge - copies now almost all distributed. Just a few left with Sue. Full access on our website www.cambridgewdm.org.uk if people need to print a copy.

B) Next CWDM Newsletter now available (attached) with typos corrected. Members suggested where they cd be circulated in libraries, churches, Arjuna, Daily Bread etc.

2. Wrapping Great St Mary’s Church in white 1 July

To mark the G8 meeting at Gleneagles in a local way, we are joining the Christian Aid/Oxfam/TUC/

Justice & Peace event to wrap Great St Mary’s Church in white on Friday 1 July at 12.45 for 1pm action highlighting MAKE POVERTY HISTORY. White Sheets will be threaded through the railings round the church and campaigners dressed in white will hold hands around these railings. So all welcome to Great St Mary’s adjacent to the Market Square. Please remember to wear white. We need 150 people to encircle the church. Sheets torn into 6 inch wide strips and sewn/joined together to make one long strip welcome before event. Sheila went to planning meeting and, if you want to help, has details on tel 503948 of next meeting to arrange this event on Monday 27 June at 7.45pm at OLEM Catholic Church on Hills Road. Beth will email round posters on this event with details of where to get hard/paper copies to display. Anyone know a celebrity who would join us? Get them to join in. Good for media cover.

3. Make Poverty History Demo in Edinburgh 2 July.

There is special transport to Edinburgh for those wanting to be at the main event there. Beth to email round details.

4. Meeting David Howarth MP

We plan to meet David Howarth soon and agreed to discuss with him the main campaign issues of cancelling the Debt, increasing Aid and making trade rules fair but concentrate on WDM’s Water privatisation campaign, pointing out the Tanzanian experience where privatisation of water led to such poor delivery that the government terminated Biwater’s contract. See Joanne Harri’s article p.27 of the Independent 14 June. Sue will circulate this. Lib Dems seem to support the Tobin Tax, a tax on currency movements. We should ask David Howarth about this too. The French support it & support is growing.

5. Campaign Card

Aidan and Clare brought back a good idea from Bristol WDM – a campaign card with contact details of local and national WDM plus issues we campaign on and useful websites with a list of acronyms and terms explained. Agreed to make our own version, Aidan to assemble text and Frank to set it up for printing on yellow paper. Agreed to ask for a quote from local printers for A5 folded to A6 leaflet.

6. Group Mailing

Dirty Aid, Dirty Water campaign going really well. It is clear and easy to explain with strong appeal.

Aidan has the new WDM report on democratic deficit at World Bank and IMF. Aidan & Clare will attend the WDM AGM on 18 June. WDM website is positive about recent developments in cancelling Debt. 18 poor countries will benefit while 62 will not. More work needed but this is encouraging and shows politicians are waking up to people power.

7. Events coming up.

A) Campaigners convention in Autumn. May be one in Cambridge as well as Oxford.

B) One World Week in October. Theme for this year is “Promises, Promises – Make Poverty History”.

8. Next Meeting

The Next meeting will be at Beth’s on 20 July at 7.45pm.

No meeting in August and after that on 21 Sept at Frank’s.