More than 80,000 people are gathering in Kenya this week for the seventh annual World Social Forum. The theme of the meeting is “People’s Struggles, People’s Alternatives — Another World is Possible.” On Saturday, the World Social Forum began with a march through the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Kenyan activist Joseph Ole Simel: “The World Social Forum is to give a voice to those who do not have a voice and say, yes, it’s true, if those people in Switzerland are saying this is the world we want to create, this a world that must be there. We are also saying another world is possible, a world where social justice, where equity, right, are going to be exercised.”

The World Social Forum is taking place just ahead of the World Economic Forum, which opens on Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland.

Kenyan peace activist Beatrice Njau: “We are telling the world, and especially the rich people in America, all over. Instead of fighting and buying arms, can they bring food and water, clean water, to the women in the village and even in the slums?”

Nobel Peace laureates South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai said 40 million Africans have died in recent years in part because African governments have failed to fulfill promises to spend at least 15 percent of national budgets on healthcare. Desmond Tutu also called for debt relief for African nations.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “Maybe there are no tangible achievements, but surely the most important is to be able to have placed certain items on the agenda and say to the world, you are not going to get away and pretend that there is no poverty, pretend that the economic order is a just one, pretend the debts that so many countries are carrying are equitable debts.”