UN Conference Report
On
“The 63rd Annual United Nations Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organizations Conference” titled “Advance Global Health: Achieve the Millennium Development Goals”
August-September 2010
Institute President, Martin Levinson asked the Australian General Semantics society (AGS) to represent the Institute at this conference.
We formed a team of seven people to do this. Here we are at the conference:
Three come from Sydney, two from Canberra and two from our newly formed chapter in Melbourne.
From the left: Laurie Cox, Earl Livings, Tom Valcanis, Pauline Callaghan, Jeanne James, Robert James(AGS President) and David Hewson.
The UN conference on Global Health promotion was held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre on the Yarra river in downtown Melbourne, Australia. About 1600 people attended, representing several hundred NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations affiliated with the UN) of which the Institute is one.
A standard day started off with a joint session in a large auditorium. Then after morning tea, we attended 90 minute workshops run by the NGOs. After lunch there were more workshops to choose from. I went to a variety, from: how health is affect by pollution in the Baltic sea; to the growing diabetes “epidemic” and other Non Communicable Diseases (which are amongst the largest killers in society); vision impairment/blindness; and a mental health workshop on depression. They wrapped up the day with another interactive session in the main auditorium. I’ve never heard so much verbose talking in my life. I can see a lot of them getting significant benefits from using GS formulations.
Also as millions of lives are at stake here, the people speaking were VERY passionate about their topics. So a lot of talks did not tell one much, instead they spent most of their time trying to persuade you to support their cause. They also had about 50 exhibits where particular organisations displayed what their organisation did. Here’s a photo of a few of them.
We applied to run a workshop and an exhibit but got rejected. When we arrived there, we set up our own de-facto exhibit by placing some GS books (e.g. “Drive Yourself Sane”, “People in Quandaries” and “Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times”, etc), pamphlets and a sign (with the Institute and AGS logos on it) on a table. Here we are, staffing the table, along with a discussion group at the other table.
We also promoted general semantics while there by talking to people and handing out hundreds of pamphlets about GS. Laurie Cox (our AGS founder and 92 years old) said he spoke to about 30 people.
Overall a very busy conference that I found an eye opener, in many ways.
David Hewson
AGS and Institute member
P.S. Some actual titles of talks given at the conference:
“Overcome Barriers to Achieving MDGs by Tackling Tobacco Use and Non-Communicable Diseases”
“Eye Health and the MDGs: The Vision 2020 Challenge”
“Diabetes and Poverty: Determining Achievement of the MDGs”
“Dark to Dawn: Being Creative About Depression” [This was the only talk on mental health. And they mentioned Cognitive Behaviour Therapy just once in the talk without any detail. So there were effectively no GS related workshops at the conference.]