PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- Academics, activists and educators get a head start on Summit of the Americas issues.

Poverty. Climate change. Public safety.

Never mind the other hot topic -- Cuba.

Nearly three dozen hemispheric heads of government will gather in Port of Spain Trinidad this weekend to tackle some of the world's most daunting problems. On Wednesday, local academics, activists and educators assembled to get a head start.

Various conferences took place in this capital city to coincide with the Fifth Summit of the Americas. Members of civil society held a forum aboard the Carnival Victory cruise ship -- anchored to accommodate summit overflows -- to discuss how nongovernmental groups can help their countries make the regional gathering more than just two days of good food and photo ops. ''Words whisper, actions shout,'' said Curla Bruce, a lecturer from Trinidad. ``I am hearing a lot of whispering.''

The delegations have not even arrived yet, and already skeptics abound. The civil society forum began with a thud when the declaration the member nations have worked on for nearly a year -- the very document the summit is based on -- was not made available. Summit attendees fear it's a sign that the action plan will be little more than an international wish-list destined to gather dust in a ministerial filing cabinet.

''I am finding it strange that this document is not here,'' said Agnes Webbe, a consultant in Tobago who is president of Soroptimist International, a women's group. ``Without a plan, how do you act on it? It's a little disappointing.''

Delegations are expected to begin arriving over the next two days for what will be President Barack Obama's first hemispheric meeting. Leaders of every country in the hemisphere except Cuba are expected to be here.

Obama will hold a series of regional meetings with the presidents and bring ''concrete proposals'' the White House would not detail.

Webbe and her colleagues felt the pre-summit events so far had taken on lofty and ambitious issues like the Internet and culture, rather than more critical subjects such as dwindling water supply and poverty.

Daniel Restrepo, special assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told reporters that the United States and the region will discuss the three basic challenges they share: the economy, energy, and public safety.

''The summit provides the President an opportunity to concretely begin the process of addressing these challenges, of ensuring and explaining the parts that the United States, the ideas that he has, that he'll put forward,'' Restrepo said in a press briefing from Washington. ``But also listening and learning from the leaders in the hemisphere.''

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