[governance] Fwd: IGC endorsements for MAG 2016 CS reps -- Endorsement of Deirdre Williams of St. Lucia by Island Resources Foundation

Fri Jan 22 17:19:41 EST 2016

Dear Members

As a member of IGC, and as president of Island Resources Foundation, I want to join with the previously submitted endorsement by the directors of the Caribbean Conservation Association in support of the nomination of Deirdre Williams of St. Lucia, a small island nation in the Eastern Caribbean, to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the 2016 Internet Governance Forum. In addition to the objective facts cited in Ms. Williams nomination (appended below), we specifically support this nomination because of her special small island sustainable development experience and engagement with a wide range of civil society organizations and programs in the Latin America and Caribbean region.

For forty-four years (the same number of years as Ms. Williams has been resident in St. Lucia) Island Resources Foundation, founded in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, has pursued a vision where island systems are not miniature microcosms of continental areas, but rather where it is recognized that a failure to understand the differences between insular and continental systems has unanticipated and too often undesirable consequences for islanders. This is a vision that Ms. Williams fully understands, especially in its Caribbean manifestation and which she will be able to inculcate through her interventions in the MAG, leading up to the 2016 IGF. 

In spite of being a small regionally-focussed non-profit research and education environmental and conservation organization, Island Resources Foundation, especially under its founding president Dr. Ed Towle, created a large footprint in the field of small island studies. From that perspective, we are convinced that it is vital that island residents have a direct role in the policy implementation, management, and evaluation of resource management and sustainable development programs affecting them. In the 21st century, the Internet is the enabling technology of the age, and without the strong influence of wise islanders and island organizations of civil society that a candidate of the caliber of Ms. Williams can bring to the IGF policy management process, much of the real world benefits of the Internet will be lost or irrelevant to small islands everywhere.  

We thank you for your consideration of the nomination of Deirdre Williams to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the 2016 Internet Governance Forum.

Bruce Potter

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> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> Dear IGC members,
> 
> I would like to seek your support for nomination as a civil society representative for the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
> 
> I have been involved with Internet Governance (IG) since 2008 and have been working to strengthen the links that bring Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) together since the early 1990s. I have attended every IGF meeting since Hyderabad in 2008 (Nairobi 2011 virtually), and also all of the regional - Latin America and Caribbean Preparatory Meeting for the IGF (LACIGF), and sub-regional – Caribbean IGF, since 2009. My attendance at these meetings was due to a broad range of funders to all of whom I am very grateful.
> 
> 	• Within the IGF environment I have worked, and am working, particularly with the Dynamic Coalition for Access and Disability (DCAD), with the MAG Remote Participation Working Group, and the now dormant Coalition Dynamique pour la Diversité Linguistique I have contributed to the work of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles and Dynamic Coalition on Public Access in Libraries
> 	• I follow discussions on Bestbits and the Justnet Coalition Forum, as well as on the Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) list, and in other areas where IG is discussed. I try to be aware of those issues that unite civil society, as well as of those issues about which there are strongly divergent opinions
> 	• For the last two years I have been one of two Co-coordinators of the IGC.
> 	• In 2014 I had the honour to be selected as the speaker from civil society at the opening ceremony of the IGF in Istanbul.
> 	• I was invited, in several different capacities, to be part of the pilot Stanford Deliberative Poll organised for this year’s IGF
> 	• I have good relationships across the group that identifies itself as civil society and also with those belonging to other constituencies. This is useful because the MAG should finally aim for consensus across all of its constituent groups.
> 	• My own priorities are in involving ordinary end users in the IG process despite barriers of bdisability, language and culture, gender, education, geographic location, etc. This brings with it a strong interest in the facilitation and improvement of remote participation.
> 
> 
> Thank you all for your consideration
> 
> 
> Best wishes
> Deirdre Williams
> 

— 
Bruce Potter
President
Island Resources Foundation
40+ Years Support for Small Island Sustainable Development
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---------Web Site------<http://www.irf.org/>------- Web Site
-- -- -- -- -- -- Island Resources Foundation -- -- -- -- --
1718 "P" St NW, # T-4 
Washington, DC 20036 
Phone: 202/265-9712      cell:  1-443-454-9044
fax: 202/232-0748; E-mail: <bpotter at irf.org> 
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
St. Thomas, USVI, call: 340/775-6225
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