The Annual International Meeting of the RCEs will this year be hosted by RCE Barcelona. More information about the Annual Meeting will be published on this website, as will updates and news facts.

The Meeting will take place from the second to the fourth of July 2008, at the UPC (Technical University of Catalonia) Barcelona. An organising committee is currently busy with all preparations.

The general information can be downloaded here.

Themes and programme

This year’s international meeting will be focussed on the learning process of the different RCEs, the development of initiatives within a cooperative framework with other RCEs and the evaluation of the functioning of the RCEs within their regions and within the larger perspective. Alongside this focus, the opinion of what the RCEs find important must be kept in mind, therefore a large part of the programme is based on the outcome of the survey. The draft programme can be downloaded here:

PROGRAMME

During the international meeting some time will be reserved for a poster session. More information will follow later, but in order to help you, we have already created a list with tips to make a poster. The poster should be A1 and it should withhold a global view on ideas and projects of your RCE. More information about this subject will follow.

Sustainable Catering: Fundació Futur

Fundació Futur began its activity in 1997 with the aim of creating jobs for people in a situation of social or labor exclusion.

They are advocating a responsible consumption and, if possible,a local consumption: 60% of the products they use are organic and/or fairtrade.

They are certified in ISO 14001 and EMAS since 2004 and 2006, respectively. Broadly speaking, they aim to properly recycle all waste, use recycled and certificated materials, use class A machines with non-polluting gases, use biodegradable and compostable materials for single-use, introduce organic food in phases and minimize the consumption of energy.

Re-employment, fair trade and sustainability are thethree priorities which they conform in an action model that they call ‘sustainable restoration’.

Tips for creating posters

• Unusual or fancy fonts should be avoided. They may look good on screen, but will not necessarily work in print. This can in turn have an impact on the appearance and impact of the poster. Substitution of fonts is time-consuming and can lead to reformatting of text. Stick to two or three well-known fonts at most e.g. Times (not Times New Roman), Arial, Helvetica, etc.
• Text should be used sparingly. Too much text leaves less room for images/tables and can make the poster look cramped and unprofessional. Too little text can be equally glaring. If you find that your text doesn’t fit, maybe you should consider a different layout.
• Try to be careful in your use of colour. Colours which are too bright or garish will detract from the overall impact of a poster. Pale, single-colour backgrounds are better. Blues (especially dark blues) are best avoided as they produce unpredictable results in printing. Standard background templates available in PowerPoint should not be used as they will not reproduce properly.
• One foolproof way to avoid potential problems is to save your poster as a PDF file. This file can then be opened on any computer using any platform and the formatting and content will remain exactly as you intended. You should ensure when creating a PDF file that compression options for graphics are not selected. Compression leads to poor quality reproduction. Please also make sure that you check the completed PDF for accuracy before sending it out. Are symbols and other elements showing up correctly? If not, the problem is in your original file.
• PDF files are produced using the PDF Writer application. This is available free on NAL. When you install the application, it appears in your computer’s list of available printers; however, instead of producing a paper print, it converts your document into a PDF file which you can then save and print. There are various compression options available when making PDF files. Please ensure that these are unchecked when saving the file so as to preserve the quality of photographs and other images.
• Should you wish to scan your own images, they need to be of a high resolution (at least 200 dpi) for proper print reproduction. Web images are not suitable, as they appear pixelated when magnified.

Registration

If you would like to register for this international meeting of RCEs in Barcelona, please email the RCE Service Centre before April 11^th with copy to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Participation from at least one representative from each RCE and all candidate RCEs who are planning to submit an application by early July (the exact date will be announced soon), is strongly encouraged. The meeting does not have a registration fee, the seeking of funding to finance travel and accommodation are however encouraged.

The RCE Service Centre has a limited amount of funding to help travel and accommodation costs for those RCEs who are unable to find financing.  Less developed countries will be given preference.  Depending on the feedback from the pre-conference survey ways in which those who are not able to travel to the conference, will be considered.

Since there will always be people that will not be able to participate in the meeting by actually being present, other opportunities of entering the meeting are being explored. Examples of other ways of entering could e.g. be through online participation.

Barcelona (city, culture, sightseeing)

Barcelona is a beautiful city, located in , Europe. It is a very attractive city for tourists, companies, but also for e.g. students. The city offers a lot of different culturally appealing sights, appetising restaurants and attractive shops. The city of Barcelona has over 1.5 million inhabitants, but if you also count the surrounding areas this number is increased to over 4 million. Barcelona has two official languages: Catalan and Castillian Spanish.

The city itself is very diverse. Influences from various directions can be noticed. An example of one of the most well-known quarters in Barcelona is the Gothic Barrio.

More tourist and general information about Barcelona can be found on: www.bcn.es/english/ihome.htm and www.aboutbarcelona.com.  

Information about accommodations

At the same time as the RCE International Meeting, another conference is being hosted in Barcelona. For that reason the city’s hotels demand extraordinary prices. Because of the fact that we did not want the accommodation costs to be too high, we have searched for another option.

Currently we have a reservation with resa for 50 individual paying persons. For more information CLICK HERE. These rooms will be on hold for participants of our international meeting until April 11. If you are interested in these rooms you can contact resa at:

Residencia La Ciutadella

Passeig Pujades, 33-37
08018 Barcelona
Tel: 93 394 32 00
Fax: 93 300 28 00
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

You are of course free to search for other accommodations within Barcelona. The advantage of this specific organisation is however, that they offer rooms within Barcelona for reasonable prices. The rooms will cost €45 per person, per night.

If you do not have the funds to finance the flight and accommodation we would like to ask you to note this in the registration form. We will then look into the possibility of financing and we will contact you on a later time. We do encourage RCEs to find their own funds!

More travel issues and accommodations are currently being looked into. When further information is available it will be posted here.

Local NGOs, organisations and so on, that are interested in participating in the meeting and that feel that they could be of added value, are welcome to contact the committee.

For further information you can always contact: Cristel Linders ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

REGISTRATION FORM