Handbook English - Earth Charter Initiative

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VI. ECI Strategy & Focus Areas
Decentralized Empowerment
“Decentralized Empowerment for Scaling Up” is the short name given to a set of policy directives and
decisions originally taken at the Third Meeting of the ECI Council held in 2007. The purpose of the
strategy is to enable the massive expansion of the Earth Charter Initiative without having to grow the central
administration, and to allow for a vast number of self-organizing, independent efforts to multiply and grow.
In support of this new strategy, the following documents have been prepared and posted on the ECI website:
• Action Guidelines for Decentralized Expansion of the Earth Charter Initiative
• How You Can Participate
Following these guidelines, any person, small group, organization, or community can make use of the Earth
Charter and put it to work in appropriate ways commensurate with their capacities and opportunities.
ECI’s central administration maintains the website and the various registration mechanisms, but attempts to
reduce to a minimum the amount of administrative work associated with this strategy.
Action Guidelines for Decentralized Expansion of the Earth Charter Initiative
Introduction
Earth Charter International (ECI) encourages everyone inspired by the Earth Charter to contribute to the
goals of the Earth Charter Initiative. Your active participation and support are needed. In this connection,
ECI is in the process of scaling-up the Initiative worldwide by promoting decentralized activity and the
empowerment of individuals, small groups, organizations and communities.
As ECI pursues this strategy, it will continue to promote the Earth Charter through various formal
international processes and a limited number of projects. However, this strategy is necessary because the
Earth Charter International secretariat is only able to organize and direct a small portion of the wide range of
actions needed to implement the Earth Charter vision.
The Action Guidelines presented below are a resource designed to help people conduct Earth Charter related
activities in ways that are in harmony with the values and principles of the Earth Charter.
The purpose of the Action Guidelines is also to ensure a certain measure of consistency in how decentralized
actions on behalf of the Earth Charter are carried out. Think of the Guidelines as a kind of virtual
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Earth Charter Initiative
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