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First Asian Level Consultative Meeting

The Centre had its successful  first consultative meeting in relation to the international conference to be held in March 2014. The meeting was held at the Conference Room, Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), Chennai, India on 8th & 9th of February 2013. It was supported largely by Development and Civilizations - Lebret-Irfed  (DCLI, France), Media Development Foundation (MDF, India), and Public Media Agency (PMA, Malaysia).  Twenty persons belonging to a number of socially-concerned organisations, bringing with them a wide variety and range of experience attended and contributed to the meeting.  The following objectives were discussed:

(1) To fine-tune the objectives, content and the 'unconference' design of the international conference, Sustainable Future and Spirituality: Moving the Human Agenda Forward,  12th – 15th March 2014 at Chennai, India.
(2) To focus on the effort to identify and build a list of concerned and committed persons from the global community to be invited.
(3) To expand the list of strategic partners for the event (to support the event financially and/or morally and to initiate post-conference activities). 
(4) To identify and seek funders and funding support. 
 

Programme

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Participants Details


Yves Berthelot

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We are happy to announce the participation of Yves Berthelot, the President of DCLI, the main co-sponsor of the 2014 event...A brief note on him is given below.

"Yves Berthelot is Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and The City University of New York Graduate Center and Co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project He is also President of the Comité Français de Solidarité Internationale (CFSI), of Political and Ethical Knowledge on Economic Activities (PEKEA) and of Développement et Civilisations Lebret-IRFED.

From 1993 until mid-2000 he was the Executive-Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (EEC). He previously had served as Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD (1985-1993), directory of the Centre d’Etudes Propsectives et d”informations Internationales in Paris (1981-1985), Director of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Centre in Paris (1975-1978), and several positions in the Government of France."


Details on other participants from DCLI are given below:

Participants from the Centre

Other Invited Participants

Dr. Unnikrishnan

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Unnikrishnan Payyappallimana completed his PhD in International Development at the Yokohama National University and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies. He has an undergraduate degree in Ayurveda from Bharathiyar University, India and holds a Masters degree in Medical Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  From 1995, he has been working with the Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions based in Bangalore on various projects related to traditional medicine. His work has primarily focused on the research and application of traditional medicine to meet primary health care in local communities and scoping out their relevance in public health policy. Earlier, he was a Senior House Surgeon at the Amala Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, India and a Visiting Associate Professor at the Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Japan. He has co-edited a book, Challenging the Indian Medical Heritage, and has a number of journal articles and book chapters in the field of traditional medicine and their health system integration. His main research interests include traditional medicine in public health, medical pluralism, traditional knowledge epistemology and sustainable development. 


Prof. T. K. Nair 
See here for details

Dr. Ramu Manivannan

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Ramu Manivannan is a professor and Head of the Department of Politics & Public Administration, University of Madras. He taught in Delhi University for over eighteen years before joining the University of Madras. He was a Fellow of the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan. He has published six books and several articles both in India and abroad. He has been working with the refugees from Tibet, Burma and Sri Lanka for over two decades in the areas of peace, education and development. He has founded ten non-formal schools for the children from stone quarry areas and the weavers’ community before building the school for poor children in Kurumbapalayam village in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. This school “Garden of Peace”was begun in 2004 with seven children and one teacher and today this school functions with 160 children and seven teachers. The children come from poor economic and socially marginalized communities. He is a trainer in nonviolence and an avocate for holistic education.  He was recently awarded “ Life Time Achievement Award” by the Lions International, Chennai in the field of education in November 2011.

Sangeetha Sriram

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Based in Chennai. Associated with Shikshantar.

Dr. Geritt de Vylder

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Based in both Europe and India and works on areas related to economics, ethics and spirituality.

Paola Cagna

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PhD scholar at Sapienza University of Rome. Works on Gender Analysis for International Development.

The Global Centre

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www.publicmediaagency.org

Booklet Series (Reprints)
Critical Orientations 
to Sustainability and Spirituality 


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  • Dialogue

This site promotes the orientation, activities, resources and projects of the Centre for the Study of Sustainable Futures and Spirituality (GCSSFS). The Centre is supported in the area of content generation, project execution, design and general administration by Public Media Agency (PMA),  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia under the direct care of one of their creative consultants, Dr. M. Nadarajah (Nat). Nat works as consultant on different projects.  He supports PMA on its various projects supporting social causes. Nat is presently engaged with Xavier University@Bhubaneshwar, India, with it School of Sustainability. He works with Loyola College@Chennai, India on issues related sustainability and spirituality. He is associated with the Centre for Diaspora Studies@MSU, Tirunelveli, India. He continues to support Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP), which is based in Penang, Malaysia, as consultant on a project to set up a 'blended' institution, International People's Agroecology Multiversity (IPAM), to promote agroecology across Asia and the Pacific. He is also a member of the Asian Public Intellectual (API)  community.

GCSSFS, 2016