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The Seeking a just, inclusive, and sustainable world that works for all
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Soon after its founding in 1990, the PCDForum initiated an Information Service to distribute print materials challenging conventional development wisdom to cooperating NGOs and media outlets for use in their publications. The service drew on members of the PCDForum's Board of Contributing Editors and other colleagues from around the world. The service specialized in columns and articles that exposed the flawed premises of conventional development wisdom regarding economic growth, foreign aid, trade, foreign investment, the Bretton Woods institutions, and related topics. The Service also prepared and distributed a collection of "Paradigm Warrior Profiles" on colleagues at the forefront of redefining the ruling development paradigm. The purpose of the Information Service--as for all the Forum's early initiatives--was to strengthen the voices and legitimacy of those who accepted the risk to their reputations and persons of challenging the legitimating ideology of a development practice that is destroying people, communities, and nature--yet is embraced almost as religious dogma by those who head humanity's most powerful institutions. It sought to demonstrate the multiplicity of voices calling for deep change in the years before the depth and breadth of the resistance became widely visible. It's materials are distinguished by the fact that they challenge not only mainstream perspectives, but also the elitist, materialistic, and anti-democratic tendencies common within both the political right and the political left. In more recent years the Forum's once unconventional views have became defining ideas of the global movement that now aligns millions of people in a quest for alternatives to corporate globalization and its growth-at-all-costs vision of human progress. As ever more groups have taken up the challenge, the number of independent media outlets, news services, and authors has grown accordingly. The Form itself took an active role in establishing The Positive Futures Network and its quarterly magazine YES! A Journal of Positive Futures. In 1997 the PCDForum's Board of Directors concluded that there was no longer a distinctive need for the PCDForum Information Service and it was discontinued to free resources for other initiatives. The materials it prepared and distributed, however, are of continuing relevance and are archived here by the year in which they were distributed. In line with the Forum's philosophy that beneficial ideas and information should be freely shared, materials to which the PCDForum holds publication rights may be freely reprinted and reproduced without further permission. Note that a few materials on the site are from other published sources. Where so indicated, please contact the designated publisher for permission to reprint or reproduce.
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