This event, which is in its fifth year, has captured the imagination of millions of people all over the world. We have to ask ourselves why we haven’t heard of it and know nothing about it? It is giving hope, inspiration and energy to thousands of activists from many countries and cultures that have been struggling alone and isolated for many years to try and bring about a different world order.

It’s interesting that we tend to see ourselves as ‘we in the west’, but from Porto Alegre we are seen as people in the north. Here from the south, the north is experienced as rich and powerful, the south is undeniably poor and oppressed. We in the north don’t want another world, the one we have is doing us quite nicely, thank you very much. But in the south they not only want but need another possible world because this present one is killing thousands every day, from hunger, disease, war and poverty.

The WSF is not only categorised by the negatives of anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-globalisation, anti-imperialism, anti-discrimination, but is also very much a part of seeking out realistic and sustainable responses to create a world in which every person lives with dignity and has what is necessary to live a full human life, their human rights being respected, and their capacity to participate in the decision-making processes that affect them recognised and facilitated.

Porto Alegre has given a gift to the world of unimaginable proportions and consequences. The first edition of the WSF in 2001 came out of the Brazilian experience of Base Ecclesial Communities and their historic commitment to creating the conditions in which the kingdom of God can be more fully realised in this world by the way we behave and relate to another and care for the poor and marginalised amongst us, making of them the subjects of their own transformation. This dynamic, which grew over a period of 30-40 years, has born remarkable fruits here in Brazil and in many parts of Latin America and throughout the world. At one of the meetings in the Forum it was said that 10 years ago there were between 70-80,000 BECs in Brazil.

This is a Catholic Church that I can believe in and want to be a part of. It has been about creating a space in which alternatives can be explored and dreamed and then brought into reality through a liberating praxis that includes all people of goodwill who accept the premise of collaborating together in the building of a better world. The story of the BECs during the military dictatorship is truly inspiring in that they accepted anyone who wanted to work for a free and democratic Brazil, so they had students, trade unionists, political activists of every persuasion, and not only Catholics, all were welcomed into the safety of the church meetings where the hope of a new Brazil was kept alive.

The WSF has come out of the people and inspiration of the BECs who transferred their skills to civil society when democracy was restored. And now it is a worldwide movement of people that continues to create the space for something new and imaginative to be born. All are invited to participate in this open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and making contacts and connections for effective action. In this world of global capital it has become necessary to globalise solidarity too. The WSF is now a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives. It is an international process, a global event, of creating alliances and networks for a new world order.

Sadly during this same period the Catholic Church has closed down all spaces for this type of encounter and reflection. Creative persons have left the community of the church in their thousands and have found here, and elsewhere, a place where it is possible to continue dreaming the gospel dream of a world in which the kingdom of God is continually breaking in. Here diversity is respected and is a core value, while in the church it is persecuted and feared. Here difference is celebrated and acknowledged while for many in positions of ecclesial power it is dangerous and unorthodox. So the torch of a Vatican II church of dialogue, empowerment and engagement seems to have passed outside and beyond us to a new moment in history.

At the WSF website, www.forumsocialmundial.org.br, you can access their Charter of Principles. Go to the English-language version and then click on the Charter in the left-hand column. This is an amazing document and well worth reading. It addresses the vexed issue of power and refuses to become a locus of power to be fought over by the participating bodies. There are many options and positions and these are fully recognised. What strikes me is the investment in and understanding of pluralism. I am now convinced that in our global village any organisation, ideology or set of beliefs that is not capable of being pluralistic is not worthy of the historic moment in which we find ourselves. This is a special challenge for the authoritarian, hierarchical and patriarchal Catholic Church. The obvious fear here is loss of power, control and a descent into chaos if a decentralising tendency is accepted. But the wonderful experience of the WSF is that it is precisely in the attempts at devolving all power to the process of debating on and reflecting on ideas that the possibility of creating genuine connections between ethnicities, genders, cultures, peoples, and generations comes about.

But the WSF is not only a forum for debate but is really concerned with bringing about change. However it recognises that the transformation of society will only occur after a process of sharing and exploration of ideas, an analysis of the reality of social conditions and its roots in oppressive structures, in order that alliances can be built up which will foster agreement as to the forms that non-violent social resistance can take if the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalisation with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive dimensions is creating are to be solved.

Everyone is encouraged to situate their struggle in the wider context of the global struggle against everything that denies life to the earth and it’s peoples. We are lifted from the local to the international, and from there to the global and then brought back to the local again as the only place where transformative action can take place. But we return to where we began with a different vision and with new alliances, with a renewed hope and determination that we are not isolated and alone but working alongside many others who share the same goals and dreams of another possible world. Reports in the press have said that there are 120,000 people participating in this fifth edition of the WSF, of which 25,000 are young people living together in their International Youth Encampment. I visited the site myself and witnessed the immense cultural diversity represented there and the extraordinary way the young people are organised into small ‘neighbourhoods’ with representative councils and structures for the duration of the WSF. Learn more about this at: www.acampamentofsm.org

The Forum is being held on a massive site alongside Lake Guaiba, it is organised into eleven thematic territories or spaces, which are worth explaining so you get an idea of just how diverse and varied the event is.

• Autonomous thought, reappropriation and socialisation of knowledge and technologies.
• Defending diversity, plurality and identity.
• Arts and creation: weaving and building a people’s culture of resistance.
• Communication: counter-hegemonic practices, rights and alternatives.
• Affirming and defending the common goods of the earth and its peoples – as an alternative to consumerist culture and the control of transnational corporations.
• Social struggles and democratic alternatives – against neo-liberal domination.
• Peace, demilitarisation and the struggle against war, free trade and debt.
• Towards the construction of an international democratic order and the greater integration of peoples.
• Sovereign economies for and by the peoples – against neoliberal capitalism.
• Human rights and dignity for a just and egalitarian world.
• Ethics, cosmovisions and spiritualities – resistances and challenges for a new world.

Over 2,000 activities were planned during the actual four days of debate and reflection. It was impossible to even get a taste for what had been organised. I participated in about 3 events each day and so only got a tiny impression of all that was going on around me. Each of the thematic spaces had it’s own auditoriums, information centre, cyber café, food court, market and stalls and a place to put the emerging proposals for common action that were coming out of the workshops. It was interesting how the organisers had fixed the capacity of the conference rooms, from the smallest at 50 to the largest at 1,000, in order to facilitate dialogue and active participation.

For the first time in Brazil, following the experience of the fourth edition of the WSF in India 2004, culture was given a vital role as a medium of fundamental political expression. Each of the eleven sectors had their own stage and space for cultural events. One of their principles is that the world can only be changed by those who practice change. And so we worked in eco-friendly buildings, encouraged waste recycling and the conscientious use of natural resources, lived in an environment respectful of public spaces and acts of solidarity. We ate food produced locally and prepared by small family-run businesses and cooperatives. No multinational corporation had any presence on the site and so there was no way to buy a coke or a Big Mac! Somehow we survived!

The first shock of the Forum was reading the programme. It was larger than a Sunday supplement! As one who is usually paralysed by choice it was surprising that when faced with the hundreds of options at the eleven venues during each of the three main work periods I was able to cope with the limitations of choosing some and having to reject others. However I do have to be honest and say that for each time slot on the schedule I usually had two or three talks I wanted to attend! I was helped enormously by Maria Elena Arana from CAFOD whom I met up with at the start of the WSF and who shared with me many excellent suggestions. I was keen to do some work on sexual diversity but never quite made it across to Area B. I tended to gravitate more towards Areas F, G, J and K, social struggles, trade and debt, a just world and religions.

The opening March for Peace of the WSF was incredible. Every one of the participants took part. Well over a hundred thousand marchers converged on the open-air amphitheatre on the banks of Lake Guaiba having walked through the city streets joyfully proclaiming our faith that Another World is Possible. I met the most diverse and eclectic groups imaginable, from Jews for Peace to the Brazilian Prostitutes Collective, from Gays and Lesbians for a Free Palestine to African Feminists, from Korean Workers Against Capitalism to Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. The whole world seemed to be there asking for our attention and desperate to share their story with us. It was wonderful and so Brazilian, lively, noisy, colourful and fun! I didn’t see most of the procession, as it was impossibly large. It felt good being part of such a friendly, diverse and pluralistic portion of humanity. This was the real world in which I know I have to live, and it was glorious!

The next day I was up and on the road by 6.30am ready to join the queues forming to hear Brazilian President Lula de Silva who was coming to speak at the WSF before going off to the World Economic Forum at Davos. I was glad to have been there, but it was an uncomfortable experience as there was massive vocal opposition to him and his policies from political groupings on the extreme left. The event was supposed to be the launch of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty campaign. It was marred by the protesters whose ideology starkly contradicted the principles of the WSF of respecting dialogue and diversity. They had a right to their say of course, which is also enshrined in the Charter of Principles, but they acted in a way that hindered the free expression of others. Even the speakers from Africa and Asia where drowned out when they tried to address the gathering. But it was very good to have seen Lula and to have heard him speak.