CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Interested in taking part in a groundbreaking social venture which will transform the way we communicate and collaborate globally?

The Dialogue Café Association is looking for dynamic, entrepreneurial and creative partners to host and manage a Dialogue Café in London. This is an amazing opportunity to take part in a groundbreaking social venture and to represent London in the global Dialogue Café network. The deadline for submissions is the 20th August 2010.

Dialogue Café is a non-profit initiative, which uses state of the art video conferencing technology to enable face-to-face conversations between diverse groups of people from around the world so that they can share experiences, learn from each other and work together to make the world a better place.

With support from the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Cisco, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and others, the Dialogue Café Association is creating a global network of physical spaces – Dialogue Cafés – which will provide access to state of the art video conferencing technology (TelePresence). These Dialogue Cafés will be linked through a global technology platform to enable city-to-city and multi city activities such as workshops, seminars, lectures and concerts. This is the first time this technology is being made available to social, educational and cultural organisations.

The first two Dialogue Cafés in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro are already open. We’re working with schools, museums, foundations, community hubs, local governments and others to bring Dialogue Café to Sao Paulo, Toronto, New York, Mexico City, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Florence, Amsterdam and Istanbul over the next few months. By the end of 2011, we will have between 15 and 20 Dialogue Cafés open all around the world. Now we’re looking for partners to host a Dialogue Café in London.

Each Dialogue Café is managed or hosted by a local partner who is responsible for creating a space for innovation and creativity, drawing in a wide variety of users and facilitating a wide range of collaborations and conversations. Hosts therefore are ambassadors for their cities, with the opportunity to showcase the very best their city has to offer in the social, educational and cultural fields.

Here are just some of the kinds of activities that other Dialogue Cafés are planning:

• Multi-city conferences and events on topics such as climate change, ageing and social exclusion connecting Amsterdam, Florence and Lisbon.

• Joint projects linking schools in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro.

• Concerts from Rio de Janeiro with Lisbon, Amsterdam and Florence.

• Young people in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro sharing stories about their heritage.

• Social entrepreneurs from Ramallah, Amsterdam and Toronto talking about potential commercial collaborations.

• Health practitioners in Ramallah, London and Toronto carrying out joint consultations and training.

We hope that those hosting the London Dialogue Café would have many other ideas of how to use the Dialogue Café in the spirit of the values and goals of the project.

Partners need three things:
a) a space (60-80m²) which is open, accessible and easy to get to;
b) creative, entrepreneurial people to manage the Dialogue Café;
c) links to networks who would be interested in taking part in and using Dialogue Café.
We would welcome expressions of interest and proposals from any group or organization that could provide one, two or all of the above.

This is an amazing opportunity to be part of a new and exciting social venture, which will transform the way we work together, across countries and cultures, to tackle the major issues of today.

Next steps

Visit the website – www.dialoguecafe.org – for more information on how to apply. If you would like more information you can also join us for a Q&A session on 30th July or 6th August. If you would like to join us please contact Julie Caulier-Grice at Julie@dialoguecafe.org.

The deadline for submissions is the 20th August.