The Forum for Cities in Transition (FCT) only works if at the close of this conference, each member city commits itself to implementing an outcome that is within its means and resources to carry out. In this sense, the Derry-Londonderry event is not a conference per se, but a continuation of the proceedings that began in Mitrovicë/Kosovska Mitrovica in May 2010.

The FCT is action driven. Without cities agreeing to make commitments and then following up to ensure their implementation, the conference becomes a chattering box -- much said, great ideas exchanged, some friendships made, some fun, shopping and sightseeing and then home, and on to the next conference.

These are not the outcomes that conform with the principles drawn up by the founding cities -- Derry-Londonderry, the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot communities in Nicosia, Kirkuk, and Mitrovicë/Kosovska Mitrovica at the FCT's founding gathering at the University of Massachusetts Boston in April 2009, principles enumerated in the "Call to Action", to which all participants are asked to append their signatures as a mark of their seriousness of intent.

The announcement of the outcomes to which the nine cities attending the Mitrovicë/Kosovska Mitrovica conference committed themselves at the last plenary session, with a designated member of each city standing before his/her peers and affirming what project(s) their city would implement before the following year's conference was the high point of the conference, an acknowledgement of the huge effort and infusion of money by Mitrovicë/Kosovska Mitrovica to ensure a successful conference, that the FCT was an ongoing process, not a once in a lifetime experience. These commitments involved the attending cities undertaking projects that would either strengthen relations among their once warring communities, thus furthering reconciliation and ongoing recovery, or undertaking a project(s) that would benefit a sister city, on a lower rung on the ladder of transition to transformation.

Without this process of bonding, of identification with the devastating consequences of your sister cities' conflict (because it mirrors your own in so many ways), and a willingness to learn from each other's experiences, to find common paths facilitating transition and in the absence of an understanding that collectively you can undertake projects that individually you would not be capable of, the quintessential reason for the existence of the FCT simply gets lost in a cauldron of idle talk, talk that will not translate itself into meaningful action.

The Derry-Londonderry Forum has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the programme you will be part of over the next four days leaves you with indelible impressions of how the communities of Derry-Londonderry -- Catholic and Protestant, pro-united Ireland and pro-United Kingdom -- continued to build on the common ground they had found even before peace had prevailed. Theirs is an extraordinary story, which they will share with you -- the story of where their communities -- protagonists in a 35-year conflict -- once were, where they are now, how they got there, and what their common aspirations for the future hold.

It is for you, their sister cities, to listen, question, learn, cooperate and work together.

Padraig O'Malley
Director, Forum for Cities in Transition