We are excited to announce that we are kicking off 2021 Council activities on November 11, and running through the week of December 6.

For the 2021 Council we will hold three Zoom meetings, and offer opportunities for Council members to engage in online conversations on the Council Google Group and Community Blog, and contribute ideas and preferences through a poll about models for our next mission. 

We look forward to having all of you join us for as much of the Council process as you can. Throughout the four weeks, Council members will have the chance to participate on both live Zoom calls as well as asynchronously, and to read and reflect on the presentations and a paper explaining the details of our topic. 

Our topic is GV@20. In 2024, Global Voices turns 20! That statement would have seemed highly improbable to those of us who launched Global Voices in December 2004. And yet, that date is just around the corner.

Beginning November 11, we will hold a series of discussions on the future of Global Voices. We will look at our present operations and organizational health, unpack our mission, and set the stage for a discussion of strategy for the next three years. 

We will share a paper on the topic GV@20, in which we detail our past mission and vision statements, and present models for our next mission statement which will help us focus our work for the next three years.

Our schedule of Council events:

• First Council meeting: state of GV, presentation on projects, finances, staffing, successes.  We will hold two 90-minute sessions to accommodate the range of time zones (you only need to attend one!) on these dates:
  • November 11: Thursday 1pm UTC
  • November 13: Saturday 3pm UTC

• Sharing of the paper “GV@20”, which examines past mission statements, and proposes models for a new Global Voices mission statement, to guide our future work:
  • November 13

• Online discussions on the Council list and the Community Blog:
  • November 13-18

• Second Council meeting: Discussions about the paper “GV@20”. We will hold two 90-minute sessions to accommodate the range of time zones (you only need to attend one!):
  • Nov 18: Thursday 1pm UTC 
  • Nov 20: Saturday 3pm UTC

• Polling the Council on preferences for models:
  • November 21-28 

• Third Council meeting: discussions of the results of the poll, introduction of 2022-24 strategy process, feedback on the 2021 Council. We will hold two 90-minute sessions to accommodate the range of time zones (you only need to attend one!):
  • December 9: Thursday 1pm UTC 
  • December 11: Saturday 3pm UTC

We look forward to meeting in November! We also will send out reminders and more announcements closer to the date.