“God Jul”

Winter is coming, along with the Christmas holidays. It is my first Christmas out of my home country Georgia and also, it is the first time for me to celebrate it on 25th of December. In Georgia we celebrate the Orthodox one on January 7th.  

Lights and colors, decorations and music, there is a Christmas atmosphere all around the city which made us to make Christmas mood in our office as well. I tried to take responsibility of making this mood. Finding old decorations, buying new ones and decorating the rooms was a very joyful process. We tried to make our office cozier. We put a small Christmas tree, lights, stars, candles. 

Also, Iryna and me had a special mission going to the forest early in the morning in order to look for cones for a wreath. Actually it was not so difficult for us, because around our house in Tumba there is a huge forest. The most interesting part was making the wreath itself. Our mentor Kristina taught us how to make it, it looks very nice. You can see the result.  

Christmas mood in Framtidståget is not just the decorations. On the 8th of December whole Framtidståget’s team was invited to the Engelen Restaurant where we had a “Christmas Table” – “Julbord”.  During the event we tasted delicious dishes and also alcohol free glögg.  It wasn’t easy to taste everything, but we did our best.  The whole evening was very nice, full of nice talks with our coworkers and some jokes.  On the next day at the weekly meeting our boss Yousef made a surprise for us - presented the gift card to “Coop” supermarket.

  At the end of the article I want to tell you about the St. Lucia celebration which is celebrated on the 13th of December. It is the longest night of the year and Lucia is associated with light. On this day, I had a chance to attend the traditional Lucia concert in the church. It was a double pleasure for me, because my mentor Kristina was Lucia and she was singing. The angelic tone of her voice and the gentle glow of candlelight made this day an emotional one. Spreading the warmth  is the message of the day and yes, SHE DID. 

The meeting of AMSED network

  From 19^th to 22th of November association AMSED organized a networking meeting where gathered the partner organizations from UK, Romania, Turkey, Portugal and Lithuania. I had a possibility to represent Föreningen Framtidståget at this meeting. The meeting of AMSED network took place in Strasbourg. The main aims of the meeting were to make cooperation between the represented organizations and to exchange the project ideas.

  On the first day we got to know to each other and made the presentations about our organizations and our works. All participant organizations are working with youth and mainly with Erasmus+ projects. We had lots of common topics to discuss. During the meeting we had some kind of brainstorming about possible cooperation and project ideas. Because of the fact that we were just 6 participants we were working as one group. The main working topic was partnership ideas for 2016. Some of participants presented a project idea, which was already created. Also, we were working with the new ideas; we created 3 topics of project ideas and wrote the drafts.

  The first part of the second day was about tools and actions. We exchanged our experiences and discussed the methods, which would make our work more productive. Also, on the second day we attended the Meeting of Youth and Diversity. The event was organized by AMSED and included different kinds of activities, such as: language workshop, live library, hate speech and dancing workshop.  

  During the visit we had possibilities to see some interesting places in Strasbourg and to have a nice time together. 

Train of the future

  On the 26^th of November Föreningen Framtidståget hosted members of the board Achraf Tribak and Said Bouchiba from the branch organization Train of Future (ATAL) - Larache, Morocco. We discussed the strategic plan for ATAL. It was about the future actions, projects against the environmental problems, working with youth and also, art projects. We had a discussion about some common plans, ideas and also, our project manager Kristina gave to them some advices. The moderator and also the translator of the meeting was Anas. The visit aimed to make a strong cooperation. 

Study and networking trip with ForumSYD

From 15th to 19th December, 2015, I took part in a project trip, organized by ForumSYD. We visited Chisinau (the capital of Moldova) and Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine). The goal of the trip was to broaden cooperation between civil society organizations of the Eastern Partnership. Among the participants were the representatives of several Swedish organizations: ForumSYD, FN-Förbundet (United Nations Association in Sweden), Män för jämställdhet (Men for Gender Equality), PRO Sverige. I was there officially as a representative (and a boardmember) of Sveriges Belarusier (Belarusian community in Sweden), however during each presentation of myself covered also my EVS volunteering.

At the very beginning of the trip I met several representatives of Belarusian diaspora in Moldova, among them - the leader of cultural Belarusian movement Hanna Mazur. Among those, who came to the meeting, where people, who had moved to Moldova 40 or more years ago, and those - who had done it just several years ago.
Together with all participants of the project trip we had numerous visits to other Moldovan NGOs, for example - Moldovan Institute of Human Rights (IDOM), UNDP Moldova, Legal Resources Centre from Moldova (LRCM/CRJM), East Europe Foundation and branches of Swedish organizations Civil Rights Defenders and Individuell Människohjälp. On the second day we took part in a big meeting of different Scandinavian, Western European and local civil society organizations at the Swedish Embassy, where the representative of European Commission described the new program "EU Roadmap for Engagement with Civil Society".

In the morning of the 18th November we arrived in Kyiv and on the same day had visits to organizations Convictus and Studena, who work particularly with gender-based discrimination. The same evening I met the leader of the Belarusian language club, where the majority of the participants (including the leader himself) are Ukrainians - so it was really a good example of how people of the neighbor country behave about my Homeland.

From the 19th till 21st of November Kyiv was a meeting place for an annual Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. Most of the participants, including the Belarusian National platform, arrived the day before. So in the afternoon of 19th of November, on the last day of my networking and study trip, I had a great chance to get acquainted with big group of representatives of different Belarusian civil society organizations, including youth NGOs. Obviously, with youth NGO's, who, among all, work with Erasmus+ program, we had a lot of common topics to discuss and even had some kind of short brainstorming about possible cooperation and project ideas.