Global Voices helps decision makers tap into the collective wisdom of citizens and stakeholders. Our large-scale, interactive meetings identify shared priorities and recommendations on essential policies and plans.
What Global Voices Can Do For You
Our not-for-profit organization supports governments, international organizations, and multinational institutions around the world to improve citizen and stakeholder participation in decision-making.
- Engage your key constituents in lively conversations that matter.
- Develop shared priorities and joint strategies for action.
- Gather exceptional intelligence and weigh critical tradeoffs in response to your key challenges or opportunities.
- Efficiently measure support for new proposals, using interactive technologies.
- Deepen constituents’ connection and commitment to next steps.
Why Global Voices Is Effective
Global Voices has engaged thousands of people in meetings where participants wrestle with complex issues, uncover shared priorities, and offer recommendations to shape next steps.
- All voices are heard, no idea is lost.
- Leading technology is integrated with facilitated dialogue.
- Participants are informed about important issues, hear a diversity of perspectives and understand critical trade-offs.
- Immediate feedback is presented throughout the meeting.
- Mutual priorities are identified through informed discussion and keypad polling.
- Significant attention is gained with a large-scale forum, increasing support for action.
- Diverse participants representative of the community are recruited for public meetings, through targeted outreach.
- Stakeholders are engaged in a way that isn’t possible through more traditional processes.
- An on-site report, distributed at the end of the day, details the meeting’s outcomes.
More about Global Voices
“A curiously effective technique of using technology to tap the collective thoughts of a large group.”
Forbes Magazine
“This weekend I learned what democracy is all about. It was a wonderful experience, bringing together people and institutions into a community.”
Patrick Vanderreydt, Flemish member
European Citizens’ Deliberation on Brain Science
“Global Voices provided expert advice, mentoring, and innovative use of technology to provide an empowering and transparent process for participants.”
Port Phillip Speaks: Final Report
“We were really impressed with the seamless execution, technology, instantaneous feedback and deliberative dialogue.”
Wendy Atkinson, Project Manager
City of Port Phillip, Australia
“Table discussions have been the defining characteristics of our CGI working sessions. For the past four years, CGI has relied on Global Voices’ process to draw out what’s most important to our members.”
Ed Hughes, Deputy Director
Clinton Global Initiative
What Is Global Voices
Virtual Tour
Welcome!
Take a close-up virtual tour of Global Voices’ 21st Century Town Meeting. Click on the arrows to see what principles and techniques make this large-scale meeting method so effective.
Collaborative Decision Making
Get focused and thoughtful input from the public or your key stakeholders. Each step of the way, Global Voices works closely with governments, organizations, and institutions to ensure that participants provide input on the important decisions that can be influenced.
Diverse Participation
Global Voices’ 21st Century Town Meetings represent the diversity of the community. Demographic targets are set and met through outreach strategies that combine grassroots organizing with mass media campaigns.
21st Century Summits tap into the collective wisdom of key constituents and stakeholders.
Informed Participation
Participants gain new understanding about the issues. Discussion guides explain the specific options involved. Speakers and videos offer additional background information. Issue experts are on-call to answer questions at discussion tables.
Facilitated Tables
Skilled facilitators ensure that everyone has a meaningful opportunity to participate and that the group remains on task. Facilitators help participants find areas in which they can agree, while remaining neutral throughout the process.
Instant Polling
Participants instantly identify their priorities using polling keypads, which display results on large screens throughout the room. Questions at the start of the meeting focus on the demographics of the room; as the discussions progress, participants vote on the most important ideas or recommendations.
Capture All the Data
Networked laptop computers serve as electronic flipcharts to record ideas during discussion. These ideas are read and reported back in real-time by a Theme Team. Every idea entered into computers becomes part of the permanent record, allowing for easy analysis of the meeting outcomes.
Real Time Summary
At the end of each discussion, participants’ key ideas and priorities are presented back to the group. This report is created by the Theme Team, who reads and summarizes all the ideas generated at discussion tables, in real-time. This process allows the meeting to build on work completed throughout the day.
Connecting Across Geography
Bridge the miles between participants with simultaneous meetings at multiple sites that are connect through live video, networked computers, and shared polling. Community-organized parallel meetings can also tune in and participate in real-time.
Immediate Onsite Report
The outcomes of the day are summarized in an on-site report provided to participants as they leave the meeting. An immediate record of meeting results supports participants to act on agreements and share the outcomes with others.
Learn More
A Global Voices meeting transforms the role that the public can play in policy development, budgeting, planning, and a range of critical decisions. Contact us with your important issue and find out how we support your work.
Large-Scale Forums
Global Voices’ clients engage large numbers of citizens or stakeholders – 50 to 5,000 at a single meeting – in thoughtful, outcomes-oriented discussion.
These forums begin with small, group facilitated discussions. During the course of a meeting, participants submit their ideas using networked computers.
Participants’ ideas are immediately synthesized into themes and recommendations, representative of the entire assembly.
Each participant then votes to prioritize the recommendations using a wireless keypad. Working together, these technologies help to integrate the collective thinking of participants.
Who Are Our Clients
Past Projects
World Economic Forum: Global Town Hall
On the opening day of the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 700 world leaders participated in a 21st Century Summit® to prioritize and address some of the toughest issues facing the global community.
Global Voices led a Global Town Hall Meeting that helped these leaders narrow their focus to six priorities for the year. Over the following three days, World Economic Forum participants discussed, debated, and produced recommendations for action in all six areas. At the closing plenary, they determined, by vote, a series of actions that were their highest priority for implementation. Read More.
Clinton Global Initiative: Collaborative Leadership and Commitment
Every year since 2005, former President Bill Clinton has hosted numerous heads of state and thousands of religious, business, and nonprofit leaders for an annual three-day conference aimed at identifying solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. And, since the start of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), Global Voices works with meeting organizers to support its interactive discussion format and provide facilitation for the four concurrent workshop tracks.
Our 21st Century Summit method allows CGI participants to learn about the issues, share their ideas, and immediately hear the collective wisdom of their colleagues. The result of the CGI meetings is the commitment of millions of dollars to global projects on education, climate change, poverty, and health. Read More.
Port Phillip, Australia: Port Phillip Speaks: Community Summit
In 2007, Global Voices convened 750 residents of the City of Port Phillip, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, to set priorities for the city’s new 10-year community plan. Participants came from all walks of life and represented the diversity of the Port Phillip community.
Over the course of the day-long 21st Century Town Meeting, citizens set community priorities, made personal commitments and identified projects for neighborhood groups to help move the city forward. Neighborhood meetings, held two weeks after the summit, further developed the community plan. The results of the summit formed the basis of the 2007-20017 Community Plan, which was published later in the year and is now being implemented. Read More.
British National Health Service: Your Health, Your Care, Your Say
Global Voices joined with Opinion Leader Research, a British partner, to organize and facilitate a 1,000 person national citizens’ forum on health care in England, in 2005. The 21st Century Town Meeting®, sponsored by the National Health Service was part of an extensive citizen input process to improve the UK’s national health care system.
Your Health, Your Care, Your Say sought guidance on how health services could be better aligned with the realities of people’s everyday lives. The deliberations produced a clear roadmap for change, driving commitments from Prime Minister Tony Blair to integrate public priorities into the National Health Service. Read More.
Meeting of the Minds: European Citizens’ Deliberation on Brain Science
More than 100 people representing nine European countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK) came together twice in Brussels over a nine-month period to consider the policy implications of new-found knowledge about the brain. Global Voices collaborated with IFOK, a German partner, to organize and facilitate Meeting of the Minds during 2005-2006.
Meeting of the Minds developed well-received recommendations for the European Parliament, providing input on brain science and policy and laying the foundation for future deliberative meetings involving citizens in scientific discussions. Read more.
Clinton Global Initiative University: Students Addressing Global Challenges
In 2008, over 600 students, university presidents, and young activists gathered for the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI-U). Global Voices collaborated with CGI-U to design and produce four workshop tracks.
The initiative challenged students, who came from every U.S. state and 15 countries to tackle global problems with practical and innovative solutions. Nearly 1,000 CGI-U commitments to change the world have been made by students who are addressing a pressing challenge on their campus or in the wider global community. Read More.
Dialogue with the City: Western Australia’s Regional Growth Plan
Over 1,100 Western Australians joined together in 2003, in the City of Perth, to determine how to accommodate the region’s tremendous growth. Their goal was to make Perth the world’s most livable city by 2030. This 21st Century Town Meeting tackled transportation, economic and cultural priorities. In addition to developing a shared vision for the region, participants played a mapping game, which allowed them to grapple with the problems faced by city planners.
Input from the meeting, along with data from a region-wide poll, an online discussion, and community-specific listening sessions, is being used by the Western Australia Planning Commission to devise a strategic plan for the region. Read More.
Positive Visions for Biodiversity Summit
Global Voices collaborated with European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy for “Positive Visions for Biodiversity.” Over 200 participants from 6 continents and 43 countries, gathered in Brussels, Belgium to create a Positive Vision of the world that we want and need for the future of humanity and nature and to share ideas on how to build a sustainable society.
During the course of the 2 days, participants created vision themes, goals to achieve them, and actions to implement them. Themes were related to governance, land management, human population, technology, renewable energies, food production, sustainable production and consumption, transformation of the economic paradigm, harmonious values and behaviors, and integration of biodiversity in daily life.
Read more about what motivated participants to attend, what their visions were and how they planned on reaching their goals.
Capacity Building in Croatia
Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer led a capacity building strategy workshop to government employees in Zagreb, Croatia, and spoke at a ceremony alongside the Prime Minister of Croatia and President of the Parliament.
Global Voices’ Mission
Global Voices’ mission is to strengthen governance by engaging communities in the public decisions that most impact their lives.
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