Other Team Roles
Elder Liaison for the Government Representative to the Court
It may help things run more smoothly, and may even help a government feel more willing to participate and cooperate, if the ECC team assigns someone to be the friendly contact person for the government representative who will be participating in the trial. The government representative will certainly have questions about the process and the trial and if there is one person on the ECC team assigned to help them with answers and guidance, it would ease their minds and facilitate the whole process.
Media Organizer (for News Reporters, Bloggers, Social Media, etc.)
The more people who are made aware of the trial the more powerful will be its effectiveness. That means local newspapers, radio andTV stations, bloggers and other social media producers will want to know about the trial. So it will be important to have someone on the team whose whole job will be to organize publicity for the trial, letting local media know about it ahead of time and keeping them updated throughout the lead-up to the trial, during the trial, and including trial follow-up as well.
Newspapers and radio and tv outlets that make free Public Service Announcements may be able to announce the upcoming trial for no charge. Putting posters up in store windows on local bulletin boards, in libraries and in places of worship will help too.
Video Organizer
If the trial is conducted virtually, on zoom for example, it will be important for one team member to be responsible for setting up computers, cameras and microphones, and lighting, etc. Even if the trial is to be conducted in person the team may still want to live-stream the trial and video-record it for others to view later. Also, some witness may need to attend via zoom even if the trial is conducted in person. Having a video-archive of the trial will be useful to future Elders Climate Court teams too, so they can view and learn from this trial. So it will be important to have someone on the team assigned to the job of organizing and monitoring all the technology so everyone else involved with the trial can focus on their own roles and will not have to worry about whether the electronics are working.
An External Advisor?
The team may decide that it would be useful to have one or more external advisors involved in the planning process to offer advice when needed, to help navigate certain practical details and to help ease the path if the ECC team runs into snags. Snags are a natural part of the process and will almost certainly happen along the way. Each snag presents an opportunity for the ECC team to engage its creativity and improvise ways to work around those snags and make the whole trial even more effective.
