A Life at the Grassroots

Some months ago, I was contacted by Tommi Nieminen of Helsingin Sanomat (Finland). I understood he wanted an article about an episode of my life that brought me to Finland in the beginning of the 90s. At that time I was part of a group of experts who were invited by a member of Finnish Parliament to implement a research programme in the environmental/ecological field. For several reasons things went wrong and we were expelled from the country.  

I met Tommi in the center of Helsinki. We had some talks and eventually an article was published in the monthly magazine of HS in the beginning of April. What follows is some background material I gave him for the article.
 

Researching traditional knowledge

I'm originally from Belgium. I've been around for a while as a social educator and environmental activist. In the 80s I was extensively involved with cooperation programs aiming at contrasting the effects of desertification in the Sahelian- Sub Saharian area and supporting farmers and grassroots organizations in Africa. 

In that context, I assisted the Foundation for Cultural Co-operation between ACP-CEE countries in organizing the international conference "Culture and Agriculture" held in 1987 at the Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. The main focus was on agroecology and food policy in developing countries. I then acted as an independent expert in West Africa for the Pilot Village Program of the AMCEN's Cairo Action Plan. I took part in preparatory missions and feasibility studies in Burkina Faso in cooperation with UNEP, UNDP and the National Committee against Desertification. Those activities brought me to Finland in the beginning of the 90s. Scandinavians countries were sensitive to environmental and development issues and we thought they could become partners in that innovative program.  

In 1991, I heard about the Essoc program. The main goal was to research forest eco-living practices based on traditional knowledge. I became part of the international group of experts who were in charge of its implementation.  

The core idea was nothing else than to create a forest eco-village in Finnish wilderness, a kinf of open-air institute dedicated to research and action learning. The interesting side of it was that people of aboriginal cultures, who were living in similar climatic conditions, like the First Nations in Canada, the Samis in Scandinavia, the Ainus in Japan, would join the program. The results were to be used internationally for planning strategies of sustainable development integrating traditional knowledge.  

Originally, the ESSOC program (Ecological Survival with the Support of  Original Cultures) was supposed to last seven years. A first group of forty to fifty people from several nationalities, most of them Europeans, arrived to Finland in the Summer. It included young scientists from different fields, as well as technicians and experts, like me. All of them were experienced with community living, multidisciplinary research methods and traditional knowledge. A small party of aboriginal people, from Canada and Japan, joined the program too.

Our main duty was to set up a small campus in the Finnish wilderness, to collect data  and conduct field research which results were to be assessed and processed by a group of local scientists. Funds to support the program were raised by our partners in Europe. Co-financing was provided by the group of experts. The making of administrative and logistical arrangements was assigned to the University of Helsinki.

In the Fall, after a feasibility study, we set up a temporary camp in Lappland. It took a while to become familiar with the new environment and climatic conditions, but everything was under control once the first living units based on a model similar to the Lappish Kota had been built. The research activities, mainly in the botanical field, started in the Spring. At our level, there were no major problems. However, we heard that the University of Helsinki wanted to resign from the agreement. The main argument was about the scientific value of our work. As a consequence, we set up a scientific committee composed of national and international experts, and a supporting group made of Finnish citizens. Things became even more difficult when the local police refused  to renew our permit to stay and when the media got involved.  

The way on how officials and the press handled the case was deeply humiliating. We were considered a threath for the whole country and went through a process of "mass deportation". Even  Johan Galtung , the person  we had chosen to negociate a new "social contract", was not heard. The ombudsman for aliens, who visited our camp several times and made all possible attempts to demonstrate there were no grounds for the decision, failed too. We had to leave the country like criminals.   

After 1993, while working in Southern Europe, I visited Finland several times. In 1995 I got a temporary job in Oulu, and some months later my son Joonatan was born. Few people involved with the ESSOC program ever came back to Finland. I was myself forbidden to enter the country for one year. But somehow, I had ties in here and I wanted to better understand what had happened, from behind the scene.

One thing should be clear, no any country in the world is perfect. What Finland had to offer was a free access to nature and a long-term forest tradition. What I mean is that, more than in any other European countries of agrarian and urban tradition, "forest culture" is still fresh here. People refer easily to nature, and still spend much time in the wilderness. Of course, like in most "civilized" countries, the "old ways" are taken over by the new emerging global culture of consumption and high technology. I truly believe that the ESSOC program, and its kind of "revival of the old ways, had disturbed someone somewhere. Another reason is that, generally speaking, Finns are very proud of themselves and do not accept easily that foreign people interfere in their affairs. 
 

At the Southern edge of Europe

In 1994, I moved to Italy where I eventually worked  for an Italian NGO from 1996 to 2004. CRIC is based in Calabria. At that time, it had many projects in so called "developing countries". All had started in the middle of the 80s. There were also local projects in Southern Italy that were aiming at empowering local communities to contrast structural unemployment and emigration. Calabria is one of the poorest regions of Southern Europe. It has somehow never interested the central government. As a result the organized crime is well developed and control almost every activity, as well as the land. 

I took part in the design, start-up and management of several important projects, like the EU-LIFE Environment project of Local Agenda 21 and participatory community building in the urban area of Messina; the EU-URBAN project of environmenal and educational park in Reggio Calabria area;the EU-EuropeAid project of development education involving partners from eight different Mediterranean countries on the issues of fair trade, micro-credit, agro-ecology and new social economy. 

This last project ended up with a road show around the Mediterranean. The whole initiative was articulated around an itinerant exhibition. With a staff of twelve people I went on the road for one hundred days. Our partners arranged local fairs, conferences, workshops and small musical shows in every town we visited - about twenty. This was an exciting experience. We met beautiful people.

In the same period, I co-organized the first Mediterranean Conference of National Parks and protected areas where we discussed the idea of local sustainable development. I was then involved with small projects of alternative tourism based on the Mediterranean genuine rural culture. 

On a more global level, I was nominated to represent the Italian NGOs within the framework of UNCCD and was a member of the National Committee Against Desertification in Italy. It helped me to keep in touch with my colleagues and friends in Africa, Asia and South America.
 

Life learning

When I finished college in the end of the seventies, I first studied in Brussels to become a social worker. I was somehow naturally driven to help people who were suffering social exclusion. Before the end of my studies I understood that assisting people to integrate a system that is excluding them was not going to satisfy me. Our modern society is based on competition, power and violence. I wanted to experience something different.

We were in the middle of the seventies. There were still many people trying to put in practice the ideas that had sprout out in the 60s. Peace, environment, international solidarity, social justice were at the agenda. Unfortunately, no schools nor universities were offering training in those fields at that time. And if there were some, they add adopted a very theoretical approach that had no links with what was happening on the grassroots. 

I was lucky. After weeks of research, I found a private college in Paris, where scholars of international fame, like Johan Galtung , were running residential courses. The model was the one of the folk high schools in Scandinavia, a movement for popular education started by Grundtvig in Denmark in the middle of the XIX century. Many intellectuals and grassroots activists from the Southern part of the world were paticipating too, bringing their views on global and local issues. I enrolled for several years.

I also joined an intentional community that was living in the suburb of Paris. Most of the members were involved with what was to become the largest green co-operative movement in France. The network was numbering thousands of members in the beginning of the 80s. It was all about organic products, vegetarian food, culture for peace and ecology. It included different businesses from shops, restaurants to social clubs, classes, performing art. They had some partnership with the college and were offering in-house training.

I really enjoyed those times. I had found a way to find answers to my main concerns with culture, society and ecology. 
 

Culture - Ecology - Society

I've always been sensitive to cultural diversity, and I believe more efforts should be put to contrast the universalism of Western culture. It's quite a challenge to teach people that other cultures should be respected for what they are, and that they might teach us something valuable for leading a better life. I often use the follwoing example. Global thinking finds its strongest moral support in the universal declaration of human rights. Depending on the cultural space from where we are looking at it, such declaration can be seen as a positive step associated with more freedom. This is mostly the case in the Western world where individual interests are ruling people's life. Vice versa, in a so called Southern perspective, the declaration might be seen as threatening the local and traditional culture, where communal obligations and claims are central to the conduct of a good life. 

How can we conciliate both of these cultural views in a creative way, without putting them in strict opposition? We have no time here to answer the question, but it's quite clear to me that we can learn a lot from other cultures and worldviews. 
 

When it comes to Society, my main concern is about how to prevent violence and power abuse, in all their forms. Violence is rooted in many cultures. It's driven by fear. My way to deal with both of them is to empower people to break the boundaries of isolation, to forge creative social solidarities, to create their own tribes. 

Loneliness is a cancer of our society. There is a huge work for educators here - and I would say for each of us too - to teach people how to enjoy the company of their fellows human beings. Many will agree with me that it's easier to find training courses about how to spend hours at your PC or how to be aggressive in business, than lessons about the ways to take good care of your kids, to make friends or to talk with your neighbor. Technology will never replace the warmth of a relationship.

Recently I found in Helsinki a group of people called Jolly Dragon. Their motto is Be serious about fun. It's a growing network of people like you and me, students, professionals, etc. Finns and non Finns, who meet freely and regularly for different leisure activities that they self-organize. It can be for a beer, a squash game, a movie, a yoga lesson, a music evening. Everybody can contribute by proposing an activity. It happens in the heart of the city. Every week there is a meeting evening in some bar of the city. 

I'm not a fan of bar culture and nightlife, but Jolly Dragon is an example of good practice in the field of social networking. The main idea is to use the Internet to getting people off line and to teaching them how to enjoy to be part of social community. Bringing people together is the first step towards any change in society. It gives them a chance to make friends, to share something of their own, to maybe find affective comfort and becoming themselves pro-active in society. Of course, in this kind of "circle", you only get what you give. And everyone of us has something to offer, to share with the others. This is especially true in Finland. where a main trend in society is towards individualism and non communication. 

If you look around you, you'll find many social networks like Jolly Dragon. They generally are not advertised on the mainstream media. You get to know them by word of mouth or by surfing the Internet. What I mean is that an epics is unfolding at the grassroots. Groups of citizens all over the world are assuming initiatives to reorganize their social, cultural and economic life where both governments and the market fail to meet their needs. Generally they tend to respond to local needs, but they may also address regional or global issues too. I'm myself involved with many of those groups that are organized for constructive social change. If they are environmentally oriented and multicultural, I consider it a must.

I'm convinced that more efforts and resources should be put on people's level, on the local and grassroots levels. Many of us are tired with those big conglomerates over our heads. Big coprporations. Big political unions. Big institutions. All of them costing us a lot and bringing us so little in the end. They are maybe good for business, but business is not the whole of life. The new social economy , the so called Third Sector which is based on social invention, is constantly creating jobs, generating solidarity, helping people to care for the environment. This is where we should put our eyes. This grassroots post-modernism is part of the anwers, and it has found a clear expression during the sessions of the World Social Forum that opened the new millennium in Porto Allegre (Brazil). I'm happy to know that it has also come to Finland. 
 

About Ecology, there is something too to learn in Finland, from the fathers of Finnish national awakening. Those great guys looked first at the grassroots, and went to the woods of Karelia to get inspired. They went to the caretakers of oral tradition - which is also a living tradition. Kalevala is full of references to a worldview that belongs to a pre-christian horizon of intelligibility deeply connected to nature. And this is where we belong. Only irrational minds can think to grow a tree without seeds. 

Here is where we come to "ecology" - and "ecosophy".  It's not exclusively about the study of species and ecosystems. It's also about culture, values and attitudes, about how one should interact in a creative and respectful way with other living form -  material and immaterial, visible and invisible - without compromising the balance of the Whole. Nature is our living memory and a piece of art. It took many generations to build it up, and only a few to threaten its self-regulation. For people of ancient culture, Nature has to be considered the "Book of Life". It's not only about aesthetics.

A starting point to understand the importance of ecology is to recognize that most of us have become illiterate in terms of nature, have lost their connections with our life support system - which is more than a system. Most of us don't know from where come the water we drink, the foods we eat. Plant and animal species are not our close friends anymore. Nature has become a resource to be exploited and domesticated. And as a result, environmental sciences have been almost exclusively oriented to management. They don't tell us anything about how to experience nature, to connect with it. I believe there is something to do in that direction. In Finland too. 
 

Sustainable communities

Many people try to implement positive actions on their own. Some others are joining forces together. In the field of practical ecology, one can find many inspiring projects all over the world. In 1995, I started networking both in Italy and Finland for GEN- The Global Eco-village Network. GEN has thousands of pages on the Internet, with lots of references on sustainable communities and eco-village projects all over the world. 

Only in Europe, there is more than 400 projects where people are improving their life style in an environmental friendly way. They want to reduce their ecological footprint (the global footprint of the nations is exceeding the regenerating capacity of our planet - we would already need three or four planets to support our life styles) and innovate socially and culturally. 

Eco-villages are learning and living centers where one can find inspiring ideas about ecological architecture, the use of renewable energy, community living, children education, peace, conflict resolution, spiritual awareness, etc. They are not meant only for ecologists or envionmentalists - they are human settlements with a wide range of diversity. Most of them are located in the countryside, but some experiences are also taking place in big cities, like San Francisco or New York. It is weird, but there are ways to make a city less oppressive. 
 

I worked with participatory processes where representatives of local communities, non-experts in engineering, architecture or urbanism, come together and share their views on how they see the future of their neighbourhood. In such a way, city planning officers  get a collection of ideas about in which way people - and not only foreign investors - would like the changes to be. It's very exciting to see how people can become protagonists of their own life and living environment, become co-operative, resolve conflicts. The tools for community planning exist and they can help to make urban neighbourhoods more sustainable. Too often, people participation is taken as an option when in fact it should be at the core of any spatial planning process. 
 
 

The world is what we make it

My conclusion is that there is a whole world out there waiting for us to bring our own contribution. I love the song of Paul Brady where he says The world is what you make it. If we want to make it looking different, more friendly, more fun, more enjoyable for the next generations, nobody will do it for us. There is a room for anyone to act and take responsibility. I don't say it's easy, but it's possible. It can happen in many unexpected ways. 

Back in 1995, I met in Brussels my friend Demba, from Senegal. He had been at the university for one year and was  unhappy about one thing. He had promised himself to bring back to Senegal enough bikes to serve his community network of 350 villages in Casamance. Unfortunately, he had only collected a hundred of them. After two weeks, he had also to return home. 

We sat together for a while in the flat he was sharing with other students, and had a small talk. 
I told him I could put him in touch with one of my friend in Denmark. She could help. My point was that I had seen  thousands of unused bikes on the streets of Copenhagen, Arhus and other cities. For sure something could be done. I called that firend and he managed to visit her before leaving to Senegal.  

I was myself very busy at that time. Therefore, I got his feedback only a year later. He was a happy man. Danes had collected 3000 bikes and sent them to Senegal. They had also started to organise groups, including a majority of  retired people, who were flying to Dakar and biking to Casamance to spend time with the locals - sharing, helping whenever it was possible and enjoying a different life within the communities. This is how one can create bridges of solidarity between different parts of the world, making people happy about their own life, helping to break the walls of isolation and indifference. 

In a globalized world, I believe that in learning how to appreciate different cultures, one can lead a better life. For sure, none of the cultures of the world are perfect - for none of us is perfect. However, each culture has something to teach. I always keep in mind this small story.

"Once upon a time"...somewhere in Africa a young volunteer of Western culture proposed a group of children a running competition. The winner was to be awarded personally.  Surprisingly at his sign, all the kids started to run together, hand in hand. They wanted to share the prize together, and their happiness was in the happiness of all. 

Personally, I go for that too.

Exploring the diversity of Nature and Culture is something worth to try. It can be very fun too.  The only risk is that you might make friends on the road. And that's really threatening!

(*) Prof. Matti Sarmela of the University of Helsinki, made a detailed analysis of the media campaign. It is in Finnish on his web site at: http://www.kolumbus.fi/matti.sarmela/iriadamant.htm

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