A gathering of immigrant and ethnic minority candidates who ran in the June 2009 local elections will be held on this Saturday 26th September 2009.
The purpose of this meeting is to provide candidates with an opportunity to reflect together on their experiences, share learning’s from election campaigns and identify areas of assistance which would have benefited candidates had they been available before and during campaign work.
We believe that each candidate, regardless of the outcome in the election, made important achievements in their campaigning efforts and that what you have learned in this experience needs to be shared to enable responses to future needs of all immigrant and ethnic minorities candidates who decide to go forward in other elections.
The organising group includes: Hope Alive with Yinka Dixon, Integrating Ireland, Akidwa, Forum Polonia, Refugee Information Services
Draft Agenda
11.45 am – Registration
12.00 pm – Welcome – (On behalf of Coordinating Group – Integrating Ireland, Akidwa, Hope Alive, Refugee Information Services, Forum Polonia)
Welcome – Agenda for the day and reflections from Immigrant voter registration campaigns
Update from Hope Alive Yinka Dixon event with African Candidates July 2009.
12.15 pm – Part 1 – Reflection by Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Candidates on Their Election Campaigns
Roundtable Discussions – Naming What Were the Challenges, Successes and Barriers you faced in your campaign.
· Candidates reflect on their own experiences and discuss their thoughts in small groups together – identify challenges, barriers they faced and highlighting areas of success in each of their campaigns. They feed back thoughts to small groups and then to the larger group to enable candidates to dialogue together on their collective experiences.
Presentations – Feedback on Immigrant in Politics from University College Dublin Researchers
· Professor Bryan Fanning – University College Dublin – School of Applied Social Science – Feedback on 2009 Research on Immigrants in Irish Politics.
- Fidele Mutwarasibo – Immigrant Council of Ireland and UCD (School of Sociology). Fidele is writing a PhD thesis on Ethno-political Entrepreneurs’ Social Practices and has been researching Migrant Activists involved in Conventional Politics and Infra-Politics – including election candidates.
1.45 pm – Break with Refreshments
FOMACS Project – Colin Murphy –Editor of Migration Matters – Fomacs will set up an area during the breaks and after the event for candidates who wish to participate in to recording their experiences of running for election. (For more information on the Forum on Migration and Communications visit www.fomacs.org)
2.15 pm – Part 2 – Looking to the Future –Candidates Identifying Recommendations
· Learning Roundtable Discussion – Candidates identify in small groups areas where they feel information, support, training or change is needed to support or enable immigrant and ethnic minority candidates to stand and run election campaigns.
· They consider and make recommendations on what could be done and by who (i.e.NGOs, Councils, Political Parties, Candidates, etc to address barriers for candidates, campaigns and political achievement)
· Feedback and Discussion
4.00 pm Close – Promoting Future Candidate Success
