For the third year in a row, representatives of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Society of the Sacred Heart will join approximately two thousand other civil society members from around the world at the annual DPI/NGO Conference at the United Nations. The three-day conference is scheduled to take place in New York from 6 to 8 September 2006.

The conference theme is Unfinished Business: Effective Partnerships for Human Security and Sustainable Development. One year after the 2005 World Summit, the conference will review the progress made by governments to implement the commitments made in September 2005. Special focus will be on best practices to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and successful partnerships between NGOs, civil society, business, governments and the United Nations. For more detailed information about the program, see www.undpingoconference.org.

The conference includes midday workshops sponsored by NGOs. Our partnership, in collaboration with the NGO Committee on Social Development, Congregations of St. Joseph and Dominican Leadership Conference, submitted a successful proposal for a workshop on "employment".

The delegation of “RSCJ-IBVM at the UN” includes participants from six different countries: Austria, Chile, Kenya, Republic of Korea, Spain, and the USA. They will be joined by Doryne Kirby IBVM from Canada who is the new NGO Representative for the IBVM and who begins her work on September 1. Joan Kirby rscj and Cecile Meijer rscj will also participate in New York.

Others will be able to follow the plenary sessions of the conference from their own computer at home by watching the live web-cast. To log on, please go to www.un.org and click on “UN Webcast” in the right column. The web cast will be archived and can subsequently be accessed at the same URL.