How will E-motive continue, now that this part of the project has come to an end? The participants discussed the history and achievements in recent years and then moved on to discuss the new set-up and collect thoughts on what would be important aspects to consider when the project continues.

Once upon a time… This is how Carin Boersma, the current project manager of E-motive, started the first part of the workshop in which the participants looked back at the achievements. They versed on how E-motive is such an important element in learning and that the approach took to learning created so many interesting results. The participants acknowledged that the special way that this project has been encouraging learning, through peer-to-peer exchanges, should be continued as it led to some important results. Gerard Steehouwer, the responsible manager at Oxfam Novib and Nicolas Martin of Somos Más then explained how the project will be carried forward in the coming period. The consortium of lead partners will change somewhat, with Somos Más and the University of Utrecht joining Oxfam Novib and La Coordinadora as main drivers behind the project. They will increasingly be supported by a team of experts from civil society that will provide their knowledge and competencies to the project on specific items.(like Deepening Democracy)

The project will also ‘go global’, shifting the emphasis to South-South relations. A global online platform, soon to be released, will provide the backbone to this more global structure. The presentation was an interlude to a discussion on how the public thought they learned themselves with groups of people engaging in a vivid interaction, enquiring into each other’s learning habits. This resulted in some people emphasizing the need for the project to continue facilitating the face-to-face meeting of people as this triggered the most effective learning process.

The lessons learned that E-motive will use for the future:

• Trust by investing in personal relationships between peers is key for learning
• Focus more on learning’s instead of influence mentality and prejudices. Focus on topics
• Design multiple learning’s instead of a one way learning. Skip the North-South paradigm
• The best solutions are born in communities. Give them light to flourish and multiply
• After empowering communities add tools for influence policies to make a real change

At the end of the workshop the participants turned towards discussing what they thought were important points of attention. Some thought that it might be important to have a more focused approach to ensure that it was clear what the project stood for. Others wondered how you ensure that the relevant groups joined Several participants saw that there is a momentum for this type of project, given that there was an increasing desire around the globe to change how we have organized ourselves and do things. And with that last comment, everybody agreed, setting a clear foundation for the next steps in the development of the E-Motive project in the coming years.

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