NICVA conference and AGM

Tuesday 14 October 2003

Tuesday 14 October 2003

Armagh City Hotel

Divided societies: does civil society bridge them or bear them?

NICVA’s annual conference will be held on 14 October 2003 in the Armagh City Hotel. The conference focuses on divided societies and offers participants unique insights from outside Northern Ireland .

NICVA has secured two exceptional international speakers who bring particular expertise to this debate. The first is Kumi Naidoo, Chief Executive Officer of CIVICUS , the civil society worl d m embership body. Kumi is an engaging speaker with a wealth of experience in the voluntary and community sector. He was Executive Director of the South African NGO coalition, SANGOCO, NICVA’s equivalent organisation in South Africa . Active in the struggle against apartheid in his native South Africa , he is also a Rhodes scholar with a DPhil in Politics from Magdalen College, Oxford. He was recently appointed by the UN Secretary General to the Eminent Persons Group on United Nations civil society relations.



Our second speaker is Ted Cantle. Ted is currently Associate Director of IDeA Solutions and leads their performance support work with around 20 local authorities in England and Wales . He is a former Chief Executive of Nottingham City Council and was Under Secretary of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. In August 2001 he was appointed by the Home Secretary to chair the Community Cohesion Review Team which was set up to review the causes of the summer riots in a number of northern towns and cities in England. The Cantle Report was produced in December 2001. Ted Cantle now chairs the panel which advises Ministers on implementation.

This conference deals with one of the big issues facing Northern Ireland and voluntary and community organisations in particular. The conference brochure will be available soon. For those who would like to register their interest, please contact Teresa Flanagan at NICVA:

Teresa.flanagan@nicva.org

028 9087 7777