Laura Tuominen

There were five delegates from Finland in Tallinn out of which three continued to Riga. Members of the delegation represented the following associations: NOC,  Democracy forum Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, Friends of the Earth Finland, Attac Finland, Network Institute for Global Democratization The Left Forum. As there were representatives from different groups we were able to explain the concept of the social forum quite well by showing openly the plurality of movements participating in the process. By presenting ourselves as representatives of different movements that are interested in the process and finding it useful we – in our opinion – were able to market the idea of open space without sounding hollow.

Some of the persons and groups we met were  already somewhat familiar with the process but for most of them the information was totally new. For the ones that knew about the process but had not participated before the biggest obstacle was lack of financing. There was also criticism of the aims of the process being too vague. Therefore we also discussed what the concrete outcomes of this process might be and have been.

Some of the groups were really enthusiastic, whereas some were interested to hear what we had to say but remained somewhat reserved. Many of the persons we met considered this an opportunity for young people to come and learn more about cooperation on the European level and to have new encouraging experiences. Based on the impressions that we got in the meetings we assume that we can find good partners in ESF mobilisation in some of the contacts that we met.The process being relatively new to nearly all our contacts we have to consider this a good start.

We also invited everyone to the upcoming Finland Social Forum (May 17-18) to have a preview of what kind of an event a social forum actually is. In Finland we have to look for possibilities of helping at least some of them with their travelling costs.

All the contact information of the groups that we met we received either from Finnish organisations or from groups that are active in the ESF process. We noticed that most of the groups were  somewhat institutionalised NGOs. This is perfectly fine and of course even more organisations of that kind are still welcome to the process. In addition that there is still a need to get into contact with more grassroots movements also. Finding new contacts (whether institutionalised or grassroots) will require help from both the groups that are involved in the ESF process and also help from the local groups in the Baltic countries.

The good thing is, that the movements in the Baltic countries seem to be networking with each other quite actively.  Some of the groups we met in Tallinn and Riga promised to forward the information on ESF not only to their contacts in their own country but to their Lithuanian partners as well.

It is a pity that due to lack of time we didn't have the opportunity to go to Lithuania. Meeting with Estonian and Latvian groups made us more confident that there is definitely a point to travel to Lithuania. Hopefully
we will be able to organise a trip there in the spring.

Most of our contacts were either speakers of Estonian or Latvian. There should be more emphasis put into contacting also the Russian speaking minorities in these countries. The tensions between different groups are strongly present and our perception of the situation is that these language barriers are very difficult to cross.

“The Challenges of Globalisation”- Conference

There was also a conference ”The challenges of globalisation” taking place at the Tallinn University with Immanuel Wallerstein etc. as guest speakers. A lot of participants had especially come to listen to Wallerstein's presentation. The event gained a lot of publicity in the Estonian media for the themes that are important also for the social forum process.

http://www.postimees.ee/080308/esileht/ak/316316.php?neoliberaalne-uleilmastumine-laheb-hingusele

http://www.epl.ee/arvamus/421481

Even though the conference was a success, the event could have been more connected to the social forum process that it eventually was.  The reason for this is that at times we suffered from a minor communication breakdown when cooperating with the Tallinn University and making arrangements for the conference and our other meetings. However, there was a group meeting of Estonian contacts organised at the cafeteria of Tallinn University after the conference and the conference was highly appreciated by those who came to meet our delegation.

Tallinn, Estonia (March 8)

In Tallinn we had a good meeting after the conference at the Tallinn University. We for example hooked up with an organisation called The Roundtable for Development Cooperation. For example issues of debt relief and trade were discussed. Their representative has good contacts to basically all Estonian NGOs and movements (also more grassroots and autonomous ones) and she seemed to be willing to help us spread the message. She is an administrator of  an email list that has more than 200 subscribers from various Estonian groups (not only development cooperation oriented).

We also met with representatives from the association for family planning and sexual health (Amor), joint Estonian-Finnish-Swedish cooperation project FEST, a consumers' association UGANDI that educates consumers in towns and villages of South-East Estonia  and a recently founded grassroots peace initiative. The peace initiative is interesting because it was the only group that we met consisting of Russian-speakers. The group aims at building bridges between the Russian and Estonian speakers for peaceful coexistence and they are also against the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Sunday a representative from our delegation also met with the chairperson of the central organisation of Estonian labour unions Eesti Ametiühingute Keskliidu (EAKL).

We tried to get into contact with many other groups as well but we were not able to confirm meetings. We were in contact with for example Estonian consumers' association (Eesti Tarbijakaitse Liit), PEN, LGBT association and a recently founded association of the green youth among others. There were also many groups that did not respond to our messages at all.

Riga, Latvia (March 10)

Monday was totally full of different meetings in Riga. We started the day with a meeting Latvia's Association for Family Planning and Sexual Health. After that we met with a representative from the Friends of the Earth Latvia. He seemed to know the process already and to be interested in ESF. He promised to deliver information to other environmental NGOs and groups. We discussed for example the similarities of Baltic and Finnish nuclear-power oriented energy policies and the possibilities of finding some common ground to work on that.

We had a group meeting where we had representatives of another environmental group Zaļā brīvība, the Latvian branch of Active Europe, some members of social democratic youth and a political think tank project present. They also promised to forward information for example to Latvian labour unions.We had tried to contact the unions ourselves but had not been able to confirm a meeting with them.

We met with LGBT group Mozaika, and we discussed the possibilities for organising some joint seminars with LGBT groups from other CEE countries in the ESF. A meeting with GLEN, an organisation that works in the field of development cooperation and education, was very useful. They gave us lots of good advice in finding groups we should be in contact with. They also made an effort to organise a last-minute meeting with the Latvian youth council on Tuesday morning but that didn't come about because of the short notice. 

We also met with an organisation called The Latvian Civic Alliance, an umbrella organisation of Latvian NGOs. They will spread information through their networks, they for example have a newsletter with 800 subscribers and the organisation has 80 member organisations in total. We also heard from the Civic Alliance that there is going to be a NGO seminar for organisations from the Baltic region in Riga in May. It might be a good idea to try to look for funding to participate in the conference, since around 100 participants from various Baltic region NGOs are going to be present there. This trip could also be connected to the mobilisation trip to Lithuania. These trips have not been confirmed yet.