IF will begin a South American initiative this summer when Fellows Mark Notturno and Ieva Notturno travel to Rosario, Argentina to participate in the Bases Foundation’s Sixth International Conference on ‘The Austrian School of Economics in the 21^st Century. Mark will give a keynote address on the differences between Karl Popper’s and Friedrich von Hayek’s views about democracy and open society. Ieva will give a presentation about IF. And the two will conduct several discussions about the policy possibilities in IF’s ‘Money, Credit, and Debt’ report. The Notturnos will also conduct similar programs in Buenos Aires, at the University of Valparaiso in Chile, and at the University of Caldas in Colombia.

Then, IF vice-president Adolf Gundersen will join the Notturnos in a facilitator training program designed to teach members of Bases how to conduct sanctuary projects, public discussions, and student-centered discussion courses. This program, which is expected to last nearly a year, will take the prospective facilitators from Rosario and Buenos Aires through an IF ‘mini-project’ that is designed to train them to do what we do by actually doing it. Most of the training will be conducted online via videoconference meetings. But the IF team will travel to Rosario and Buenos Aires in March 2017 to kick off the program, and then again in 2018 to put a capstone on it.