Tens of thousands of anti- globalization activists from around the world are gathering in Nairobi from Saturday for a forum aimed at improving the fulfillment of actions by social movements with a new methodology.

The World Social Forum (WSF) will see various secular and religious groups and organizations discuss their respective ways of coping with the problems related to globalization, all with the shared goal of creating a society and promoting forms of development that are based on justice, human rights, solidarity and democracy.

The seventh annual forum will be the first time the event has been staged in its entirety on the world's poorest continent where complaints about the impact of globalization are often the loudest.

But organizers are hoping the focus will fall mainly on the troubles of ordinary people whose living standards have failed to improve as the economies of the West and emerging Asian powerhouses surge ahead.

The WSF, which was created as a challenge to the coinciding World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, brings together over 80,000 conglomerate of activists and non-governmental organizations to discuss issues such as poverty, disease and trade among others.

"We must avoid converting the converted. This is the continent ( Africa) where the capitalist economy has wrecked more havoc, where the issue of access to and use of natural resources is the most acute as are the problems of the debt and food independence," said Wahu Kaara, a member of Kenyan organizing committee.

The WSF precedes by just a few days the WEF (Jan. 24-28) which will draw top business and political leaders to discuss how to improve the global economy.

For the WSF, also known as the Porto Alegre Forum after the Brazilian city where it was first held in 2001, the WEF excludes the poor and the marginalized and does not take into consideration their needs.

Themes for the seventh WSF, on January 20-25, have been pegged to the motto, "People's struggles, people's alternatives -- Another world is possible."

Topics to be addressed include HIV/AIDS, gender, privatization, landlessness, peace and conflict, migration and Diaspora, youth issues, debt relief, free trade agreements, labor and housing.

The meeting kicks off with an anti-poverty march from Nairobi's Kibera slum -- the largest slum in Africa and home to about 600, 000 people -- to Uhuru Park in central Nairobi .

Some of the participants were driven into Kenya in a massive caravan of buses, vans and cars originating from places as far as Cape Town , South Africa, and Lusaka , Zambia for the week-long meeting whose main events would take place in Kasarani sports complex in the outskirts of Nairobi.

The WSF did not make any significant declaration at the end of the previous meeting, but organizers said it is a process toward an eventual goal rather than an annual conclusion.

Source: Xinhua