TIGblogs - Franziska Seel's TIGBlog

Keynoting the Global Engagement Summit 2008

Tue, 06 May 2008 13:12:00 EDT

In an effort to revive my blog, I'm going to start posting updates from my work at TIG GYAN :) Here is a reflection about my trip report to Chicago:

On April 17th I traveled to Chicago to attend the Global Engagement Summit at Northwestern University. I was invited as one of the Summit’s three keynote speakers and also held a workshop on “Technology as Global Platform”.

The mission of the Global Engagement Summit is to build the capacity of the next generation of global change leaders to cross-borders and partner with new communities to produce responsible, sustainable solutions to shared global programs. I was very impressed with how well the summit was organized, and the level of engagement and commitment of staff, participants and facilitators was incredibly inspiring.

One of my personal highlights was to have two active TIG members from Nigeria and Liberia attending my workshop on Friday morning. Both of them are actively involved in CLCWA, and the guy from Nigeria was also an active member of the Nigerian WSIS Youth Caucus team (he was wearing a green ‘Nigeria Rocks’ scarf, which brought back many good memories and made me very happy :)

In my keynote speech I emphasized the motivation and hope that derives from being part of a community of like-minded young people. When I prepared my speech the night before, I read on the GES blog on socialedge.org that, in his opening speech, one of the co-directors of the summit had remarked how he had always felt really frustrated about the limitations young people face in affecting change in a complicated world, and that it wasn’t until he participated in a previous Global Engagement Summit that he realized he was not alone, but part of a larger generation of young people with similar concerns, who together were making a difference. In my speech, I quoted him and then told my own story, which is very similar to his and indeed, in my belief, the story of so many of us.

I then went on to talk about GYAN’s 5-level model of youth organizing, explaining how social change is created through the collective and collaborative efforts of individuals and organizations focusing on awareness, action and policy change (the title of my speech was “Connecting global youth movements and community efforts to global systemic change”).

This is the blog post about my speech, which provides a brief summary from a listener’s perspective: link to blog about my speech.

Is a new innovative citizen society possible?

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 08:06:00 EST

... Only with young people!

Yesterday evening I went to hear a lecture by Paul Nolte, a German professor (with a background in history and sociology) and leading intellectual. Some time ago (well, it must actually be a year or two ago already), I found one of his books and read it with great interest. The book was called “Generation Reform” and provided a couple of – in my opinion - very good thoughts and ideas about the future of the German state. Because the book was so inspiring to me, I really wanted to go and hear him speak.

His lecture was called “The price of chances - About the economy of a new citizen society” and was organized by the Körberstiftung as part of their “Körberforum”, which is subtitled “For people, who don’t want to leave everything as it is” :) His lecture was basically divided into four parts. In the first part, he outlined the different values and guiding principles of the citizen society over the last three decades and especially how they changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall (basically in the 80ies, citizen society (or civil society as you might also call it) existed as a form of self-organization against the power of the state, whereas in the early 90ies the state wasn’t seen as enemy anymore; citizen engagement started to be was seen as “activities of individuals in social networks”).

The second part focused on the relation between the citizens and the state. For Germany, Paul Nolte identified four important “crisis”, which have a huge influence on our society:

The crisis of the consumer society (consummation past its peek at the end of the 80ies and is since declining)

The crisis of the tax state (people are less willing to pay more and more taxes but at the same time are less aware of the rising costs of public services)

The crisis of the welfare state (growing state debt since the 70ies and a growing feeling of people to give more than to receive)

The crisis of the public sphere (people are retreating into privacy and democracy is not res publica anymore, but rather seen as a political system that should ensure as much freedom of privacy as possible).

In the third part of his lecture, Paul Nolte presented his idea of the new “innovative citizen society”. Instead of being just mere consumers of resources and having a lot of expectations to gain from the state and others, people should invest more into society again and also show more solidarity. Everyone should ask themselves: “What can I do as an individual to serve the society I live in?” The whole concept is based on a sustainable and more long-term approach: innovations that are made today will bring benefits tomorrow – this is something that people seem to have forgotten. One good example is that in Germany, parents are not willing anymore to invest in the education of their children if that means that they have to cut down their own standard of living (not to mention that investing in education is generally “out” so to say – something that I know from my own experience with my mum).

Lastly, in the fourth part, Paul Nolte described how the state could address some of the problems highlighted in the second part.

While the lecture was generally good, the discussion with questions from the audience that followed it was much more eye-opening to me (probably also because I had already read about many of his ideas in his book). There were quite a number of people who spoke up and they were generally quite critical of his vision. A number of people even compared his visionary idea of more socially active citizens with the vision of communists who claimed that for socialism to work, a “new human” is needed. But in general (making the comparison with communism or not), people argued that his vision is unachievable. You could hear comments like: “”People are not interested in the society anymore, they just care about themselves and you can’t change that” or “the majority of people wants to be led and for those who lead, we have our politicians” - which is a comment that totally ignores individual leadership and is in my opinion exactly what Germany is lacking!

Over the last years, it has become more and more embarrassing to talk about one owns individual engagement. Doing social work is not really something that is openly valued and appreciated – people are not grateful to others to do this kind of work (and this is exactly one of the things that Paul Nolte mentioned in his speech as well) and instead of those of us who are active telling others that they should do the same and show more solidarity with their fellows, we are hiding ourselves and our activities when talking with other people about them (in my case, I know that telling many people at university about the things I do, I would just hear from them things like “why don’t you go out and party more?”). In addition, I strongly believe that we need more leadership in all spheres of live. This is an area where we can learn a lot from America – promoting leadership skills, valuing them and awarding leaders for the benefits they bring to our society. All this is non-existent in Germany.

I actually very much liked one of the responses that Paul Nolte gave to a statement that we can’t change a thing anyway. He said: “Only because a disease is hard to combat, doesn’t mean that we don’t try curing it”. But adults are so … disillusioned, vision-less, exhausted from life or as Kumi Naidoo’s son apparently once phrased it “contaminated with experience”. Renée, the Coordinator of the Millennium Campaign in Germany, who spoke at the event of the European Youth Forum, which I attended this weekend, said in response to the question, why she chose to focus in her Campaign on young people: “If I speak to adults about the MDGs, they might agree that they are very important, but they are very skeptical if they can actually be achieved. If I speak to young people about the MDGs, they say: Ok, let’s do it and make them become a reality!” It was exactly these words that I had to remember yesterday evening when I heard all these old people speak. And maybe the reference to communism isn’t something that we should just laugh about. Maybe there lies a deeper truth in it. If you look at people in Germany who “don’t want to leave everything as it is”, then you’ll find out that (still) a majority of them are “Alt-68er” (those who were part of the big student demonstrations in 1968). Many of them were communists, but after the fall of the Berlin wall, all that they believed in over many, many years suddenly fell apart. They had to realize that their vision was unrealistic – and they became disillusioned by that.

But if the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism disillusioned so many – then this is yet another reason for me to turn the power to young people, whose minds are still “uncontaminated” and who still believe that, if you just work hard enough, then it is possible to make a vision come true! Giving up before the work has even started is a virus that unfortunately, too many people have already been infected of.

The mysteries of technology...

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:48:00 EST

On Friday, something really weird happened to me, something, which still doesn’t make any sense to me. But let me tell you:

A few weeks ago I was invited by the European Youth Forum (YFJ) to attend their “MDG information and training day” in Bonn (the former capital of Germany) as a resource person on the MDGs. I was first supposed to just co-present on the topic “Youth and the MDGs” with Leif Holmberg, bureau member of the YFJ, but in the last week before the event I was asked if I could give two more presentations, one about the MDGs more broadly (I called it “The Millennium Development Goals – Opportunities and Challenges”) and one about advocacy for the MDGs (“Advocating for the MDGs – the birth of a new global movement”). As A friend of mine was visiting me last week for a couple of days, I had no time to prepare any of the presentations though, so I ended up working on them during my train ride to Bonn.

I spent about 1 hour on my part of the MDG and Youth presentation when it was almost done – I just wanted to add a few screenshots to it. But for some strange reason Powerpoint didn’t want to add them. So I saved the document and restarted Powerpoint – nothing. Then I restarted my whole computer. But after that, I suddenly couldn’t open the document anymore. Instead the program gave me the error message “this file can’t be open as it is either corrupted, in use or the program doesn’t support this kind of file” (something along these lines). It was very strange, but whatever I tried, it didn’t work, so before loosing even more time, I reconstructed the whole presentation :-(

When I arrived in Bonn, I had a meeting with the organizers and we then went to have dinner. After dinner, the event was opened with “ice-breakers” (some of them were actually really funny games – I had great fun!). However, it wasn’t until 11pm that I could eventually sit down with Leif to finish the presentation and finalize also my two other ones. At 1:30am we were finally ready though and Leif went to his room. And now it happened, what I still have no explanation for: After Leif had left, I saved all the files (I’m 100% sure I did), left my laptop on the bed and went to the bathroom. When I returned, the file with my presentation had strangely disappeared!!! I was utterly confused as you can imagine – how can a file just disappear? But the place where I had saved it on my desktop was suddenly empty – there was nothing than a big hole. I started searching on my whole laptop for the file (luckily I have a Mac with Tiger, which makes searching for files thanks to Spotlight so much easier), but the only file that I could find gave me the same error message than the one I created in the train that afternoon – and I’m not even sure that it was that file (I also searched for auto recovery files etc, but to no avail).

Luckily, when I was just looking for the file, Leif called again to ask when he should wake me up (my presentation was at 9 am and he knew that I have a hard time getting up so early in the morning ;-) I told him what happened and he said he would come down to my room immediately. But even with his help, we couldn’t find the file again and the corrupted file didn’t want to open on his laptop either. In my desperation, I even tried calling Mike in Toronto, who had helped me many times before with computer troubles and who I knew can do magic when it comes to technology. And in fact, after sending him the file, he was able to retrieve the information, but he told me that the file only contained two slides – how weird!

So basically, there was nothing I could do. The only file that we found on my laptop was corrupted and contained only two slides (another reason why it probably wasn’t the right file: it said that it had last been changed around 12 pm), while the real file had completely disappeared!! I’m still trying to come up with a logical solution that would make sense to me, but so far it is still a total mystery to me.

The presentation went nevertheless very well though. I went to bed at around 2:30 am that night (although I was so confused that I couldn’t sleep until 3:30 am), but thanks to Leif’s help I was able to reconstruct the whole presentation the next morning.

It was very crazy though; I got up at 7 am, started my first presentation at 9 am, presented – with breaks - until lunch at 1 pm and then after lunch co-moderated a policy discussion on aid and debt. When I stood up from my chair after this policy discussion meeting and spilled my whole bottle of water on the carpet I knew – it’s time for me to sleep!!

It’s still surprising though how you can even with just a few hours of sleep be fully present if you have to. It all depends on your mind – I had to be fit to present, so I was able to do it. But after my responsibilities were over, I collapsed immediately.

Anyway, I wanted to share this little story about my presentation with you – maybe some of you had similar experiences already? Although, I doubt that disappearing files are a very common phenomenon…

Let normal people speak out and we'll better understand each other

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:43:00 EST

This morning I read a very interesting interview with Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss born Muslim and one of the leading intellectuals about the Islam. When they came to talk about the freedom of press in European countries, Ramadan said that many Muslims in the Middle East think that the governments are responsible for the caricatures printed in the press, because in their countries the president controls the press. When asked by the newspaper, if he also thinks that many people might not be aware of the fact that there is even in European countries a huge debate about the caricatures, he said that he thinks so, but added one important thing: He said, that we in Europe are not much better in this respect as we see the people in the streets of Islamic countries, who smash the windows of European embassies and demonstrate against “the West”, as the Muslims.

We don’t differentiate either. And I must admit that he is certainly right. One reason for that is the one-sided press in our countries (which is in fact something that Tariq Ramadan mentions in the interview as well). It’s the same as with young people in the press: The bad and ugly is portrayed all day, but nobody talks about those who can be seen as role models - or even just normal people (cause I don’t believe that every Muslim is supporting the violence these days as much as I don’t believe in the common view that young people are supposedly not interested in anything societal and rather watch TV or play video games the whole day than contributing to their communities).

For that reason, I started searching for literature that is presenting me with another view – I’m fed up with the daily bad news that I have to read when opening the newspaper in the morning (or rather looking up the headlines on the Internet). So far I have found two books that I really liked and that gave me a new view on people in countries you usually only hear bad things about. One book was a biography of Wangari Maathai. A very short and simple description of her life, how she grew up, why she started the Green Belt Movement and how she became active in the political arena. The reason why I liked the book was because it was presenting me with a fascinating and courageous African woman who dared fighting against her corrupt government even though that meant that she was constantly risking her life. These are the stories we need to hear! I’m sure there are many more people like Wangari Maathai on this vast continent – journalists, where are you? Find these people and tell us about them!

The second book that I read in December already is a book called: “We are Iran: The Persian Blogs” (the German subtitle is even more interesting: Rebellion against the Mullahs – the young Persian Weblog-scene). The book basically consists of hundreds of quotes, taken from weblogs of young Persians who similarly to Wangari Maathai risk punishment for publishing their opinion on the Internet. Nasrin Alavi uses these blogs to present the reader with a completely different picture of Iran: Young women who write about love, friendship and their admiration for Shirin Ebadi (another one of these great people we should hear more about!); young people who are fed up with the politics of the ayatollahs in Iran and who clearly say: “our enemy is not the US, our enemy is our own government!” and students who fight for human rights and the freedom of press.

While western newspapers only report about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s newest speeches in which he either denials that the Holocaust ever took place or offends western governments in some other way, this book allows us a glimpse behind the curtain of hateful speeches and gives us an understanding of the struggle and endeavors of ordinary young people in Iran.

Let me cite a book review that I found on amazon.com:

Any who would understand the people and culture of Iran must read We Are Iran: The Personal Blogs: it gathers the country's Internet diaries and translates them from Farsi to provide quite a different view of the ordinary people's sentiments and experiences. Much of what comes to the U.S. in newspapers comes from reporters or politicians: We Are Iran comes from the people - in particular, from an educated, youthful, literate segment of the country which doesn't condone Islamic fundamentalism and which is eager to embrace a new era. Supplementing these blogs is commentary on these people and their concerns, providing the background and cultural insight necessary to appreciate the voices and their place in modern Iranian society.

Of course, there hasn’t only been positive critique for the book. As one critique points out: “The vast majority of Iranians do not have access to the web. As in most countries, Iranian bloggers represent the views of a very limited demographic group - affluent and otherwise privileged individuals." When reading the book, we have to remember this. But I’m nevertheless extremely happy to have found this book. I wish, more people who are quoted in the book were given the chance to appear in western newspapers and magazines – I’m sure it would help a great deal for a better understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. To end with the words of Tariq Ramadan:

“If it should come to a clash of the cultures, both sides will lose. If it comes instead to a dialogue of the cultures, then both sides will profit. We must understand that whether we win or lose, we will do it together.”

Ode to New York

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 20:26:00 EST

Stuck in the middle of nowhere.
This place is not my place anymore.
Rain is covering the soil I’m walking on,
Like tears sympathizing with me.

I’m longing to be embraced again
By this city;
As much as I’m longing to be kissed
By the person I love.

Loneliness is creeping into my soul.
The night is my only friend.
Darkness is surrounding me,
Like a warm shell covering my skin.

I’m longing to be embraced again
By this city:
As much as I’m longing to be kissed
By the person I love.

At night, this place has its right to sleep.
At day, I’m tired of its pace.
Slow and constant are its moves,
But no change will ever be borne here.

I’m longing to be embraced again
By this city;
As much as I’m longing to be kissed
By the person I love.

I need to leave and I know where to go.
Darkness is light, and light is darkness.
The city that never sleeps,
Is my place to be.

New York,
I’m longing to be embraced by you.
How long still do I have to wait to make you mine?
How long still before I can sleep again?

[It must be at least 8-9 years since I last wrote a poem or any piece of lyric.... Kudos to Coldplay for the inspiration while writing and for the first line that I allowed myself to copy.]

Reflections about a weekend and beyond

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:34:00 EST

Usually a year ends with reflections. But for me, it seems as if I postponed this moment of the year to the beginning of the new one. Over the last days, I’ve started reflecting about a lot of things (and I say I started as I have the feeling that this phase will still last some time). I’ve reflected about personal things - such as myself, what I want to achieve in 2006, about love and friendship - but also about “external” things, such as “the world in general”, TakingITGlobal, youth participation and youth structures in Germany…

This weekend I attended a seminar organized by the Servicestelle Jugendbeteiligung to give input to the NAP-Report, a paper, which provides the German government with feedback to the German National Action Plan for a World suitable for Children (Nationaler Aktionsplan für ein kindergerechtes Deutschland 2005 – 2010). We were about 20 selected young people from all over Germany, divided in three groups to give input to the chapters “youth participation”, “living standard” and “international responsibilities” (another seminar will deal with the other three topics of the NAP next weekend, these are “equal opportunities through education”, “growing up without violence” and “promoting a healthy life and environment”). Due to my background in international youth work and especially my knowledge about the MDGs, I was invited to participate in the third group about international responsibilities. We were a great team of young people between 16 and 24 and I’m generally very satisfied with the recommendations we came up with. One thing I’m especially happy about is that the group decided to recommend our government to support and promote the MDG and Youth Report. But even though I enjoyed the policy work, the weekend made me realize again that I’m slowly getting old and soon won’t be “youth” anymore. I also felt strange at some times given the vast experience I was able to gain over the past years and I strongly believe that I shouldn’t participate in such meetings anymore, rather should I support younger people to get involved (for a similar experience check my blog about the World Youth Congress 2005). I also realized that I’m getting old when I returned home yesterday evening: Two nights with barely five hours of sleep, alcohol in the evenings and full working days – I seriously can’t do this anymore… ;- )

Beyond these personal reflections, there are, however, also a few things that are more general and which I would like to share here:

First of all, I must say that I’m positively surprised by the fact that the German government initiated (and funded) this process, which gave young people the opportunity to give feedback to the report and provide concrete recommendations of how to expand or concretize it (the recommendations we developed this weekend will be handed over to our Minister of Youth in March and will then be discussed within the government). Looking back at the past 3-4 years, this has almost become a standard procedure in Germany, but more generally in Europe I think. For example, in 2002 I attended a German youth conference (organized by the same Ministry) to give input to the European Commission’s White Paper on Youth. Also, at the end of 2004, young people from all over Europe were invited to give input to the European Youth Pact. More and more, giving young people the chance to provide input to policies that are directly made for them, is becoming a standard procedure in Europe.
Given this fact, one of the recommendations we developed in our group this weekend, and which I strongly believe in, is that the German government should play a leading role in guiding developing countries in the same direction. Showing developing countries, how youth policy is made in Europe and providing them guidance in how they can work towards setting up similar procedures is something that Germany should see as a responsibility towards children and young people in other countries.

Beside the official seminar, I had the chance to discuss, brainstorm and plan with a few other TIG members and youth activists from Germany the future of TIG in Germany and “the good, bad and ugly” about German youth structures. It is amazing for me to meet people like Hodg or Marc, who are so full of enthusiasm for TIG and want to support us in getting TIG more widely known and used among young people in Germany. At the same time, though, there were quite a few people who had visited TIG before and were simply overwhelmed with the vast opportunities the site offers – so overwhelmed that they never came back. While I’m happy that we are meanwhile a small, but enthusiastic group, which is interested in translating TIG into German, I must say that there are limits to promoting TIG in Germany if this problem is not being dealt with.
While TIG is growing in other regions, Western Europe has a well-established culture of youth participation and it is much more difficult to convince young people here about the value of TIG. I also think that Western Europe is much more inward-looking than most developing countries. While European young people repeatedly say that they are interested in the world and care about the well-being of people in other countries, most youth organizations are still dealing with local or regional problems – and not so much with international ones. This is of course an opportunity as much as a problem for TIG.

It will be very interested for me to see into which direction German youth structures will be heading in the coming years. A growing resistance among newly set up youth organizations (but also government structures I imagine) in Germany towards the National Youth Council, which is not able to react in any way flexible, the growing need (at least in my view) to focus on international work and the growing interest of the Ministry of Youth to involve young people in policy making – all these challenges will have to change the existing youth structures in some way sooner or later. Let’s see when and how these changes will happen :- )

The Burden of Memory

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 19:48:00 EST

A few days ago I finished reading (the German translation of) the book “The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness” by Nigerian Nobel Prize Laureate Wole Soyinka. It is not an easy book to read. The texts are lectures that Soyinka gave at Harvard University in 1997. But I managed to last through the whole book, probably in hope for more lines about this one thought that Soyinka already describes very early in the book... The questions he raises all focus around the three words: truth – reconciliation – reparation.

Throughout the book Soyinka refers to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and sometimes to the similar institution in Nigeria, which has dealt with the atrocities of former dictatorships such as the one of Sani Abaja. In these commissions, truth is perceived as the road to reconciliation: If only the perpetrators admit their atrocities and speak out the truth, reconciliation is possible and in most cases accepted by the victims. But what role does reparation play, asks Soyinka? He questions, weather reconciliation can take place without reparation and he refers to the Holocaust as one example – reconciliation without reparation would have been impossible to imagine in case of the Holocaust.

The point that he wants to make in the book is that reparations should be paid for the slavery system during colonialism and I think this is an interesting point. Interesting not in the sense that I say: Yes, that’s what Africa needs. Rather interesting in the sense that it makes me think.
I’ve been reading a few customer reviews on Amazon about the book and in fact, most people there (although, all Americans) are arguing against any form of reparation. Let me quote a few lines to discuss what I find interesting about the idea:

“[…] though we lament the truly horrific thing that was done to black Africans, their enslavement, and though we must never forget the truth that, for all it's humanistic rhetoric and ideals, our Western Civilization perpetrated this evil, we must also recognize that it was Western Civilization which was responsible for ending the horror. We must recognize that the generations which committed these acts should not be judged by our modern standards and that, in any case, they are long gone.”

“[…] the more important question for Black Africa and for it's intellectual leaders like Mr. Soyinka is: Does this obsessive focus on the past help to create a brighter future for Africa? Although it is a truism, the future is not about the past. In making the case for monetary damages, the author alludes to Holocaust survivors and their quest for reparations and for restoration of lost bank accounts. There's no need to rehash the issue of actual victims and actual wrongdoers, the more significant fact that he's missed is that European Jews did not sit around waiting for these damages to be paid. They seized the moment, fled to better lives in America and established their own nation in Israel. They moved forward and are a stronger, better people for it.”

There is one thing I agree with: No doubt, Africa shouldn’t be looking back – it should be looking forward, because this is the only possible way out. However, I wonder about one’s ability to simply forget the past. The person I just quoted is saying that European Jews didn’t just sit around waiting for the damages to be paid. It is true that they didn’t, but nevertheless: would Jews today really be as strong, if the world, and Germany in particular, would have just offered the truth for reconciliation? Weren’t the reparations paid to European Jews an essential part of the reconciliation process? I believe it’s not even a question only to be asked the victims. As a German, I would still feel a tremendous guilt for my grandparent’s generation if Germany had never apologized in such a way for its past as it did (I still feel guilty btw, but to a much lesser extent – I guess, this is part of my German identity). In the same sense, I would feel guilty and ashamed as a Japanese in front of any Chinese person as Japan missed to apologize in the same way for its atrocities in China during WWII.

Africa, however, never had the chance for such reparation and even the awareness within the colonizing countries seems to be missing. Maybe it is just due to my general bad memory when it comes to history, but was there ever a time when Europe was reflecting about colonization? I just remember taking a course about migrants at university about two years ago. During this course, we did a city tour “on the footsteps of migrants in Hamburg”. One stop during this tour was the Africa House – a trading center from which once Germany decided much of its politics in its colonies in Africa. Amazing for all of us during the tour – the same company which was leading the center 100 years ago, is still having its headquarter in the house today. Accustomed to reparations that were paid to Jews, we were all shocked that nobody ever questioned the integrity of this company and that no reparations were ever asked for.

Another quote:

“The course that Mr. Soyinka counsels, backward looking, grudge nursing, scab picking, entitlement claiming, as it is, must surely be a recipe for continued stagnation and even decline in Africa. The cold hard truth is that the West will send aid to Africa, not for reasons of guilt or of obligation or of cosmic moral justice, but for that most basic, most Western, of all reasons: because Africans represent a huge underutilized customer base for Western business. It is the height of folly for the best minds of Africa to waste their time on such a notion as Western reparations to Africa. It's over. You have your freedom. You run your own countries. Your destiny is once again in your own hands. Enough of looking without for the answers to your problems; look within; to do otherwise is to remain dependent on the West.”

Looking within. A lot of problems that African countries face today are remains from the colonial time. Of course we can say: but nevertheless does the continent have to live with it now and move ahead. “Yes – but”, I would respond:

Last summer, my ex-boyfriend broke up with me in a very ugly way. I was hurt for several months, I couldn’t think clearly let alone look ahead into the future. It was only until the day I forced him to meet with me and talk to me, tell me the reasons (that he didn’t have) for breaking up with me. Soyinka is right when he says that victims need to know the truth at least. It is only after a victim has faced its tormentor that it will be able to move on with its life. But Africa never even had this chance of facing its tormentor.

I don’t know if this all makes any sense. It’s a huge topic and would probably fill a whole evening to discuss. It’s also a very philosophical topic and actually goes way beyond the question about reparation pays to Africa. To me, and that’s why I lasted through the whole book, the general question about the relationship between justice on the one hand and truth, reconciliation and reparation on the other hand, is just a really interesting one. As I just said, I had to remember my own personal situation last year and there are surely several other situations in my life when I wanted to know the truth, if not even a “reparation” or compensation for what I experienced. Sometimes such compensation is more important for us than we want to admit.

Figure it out yourself and dare not to fulfill the norm! A story about German universities.

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:42:00 EST

Over the last couple of weeks I spent quite a bit of time thinking about a possible topic for my master thesis, which I’ll have to start in spring next year. Attending the events around the 10-year review of the World Program of Action for Youth in New York played a crucial role in determining which area I wanted to concentrate on: youth employment. Whoever I spoke to in New York – people from UNFPA, ILO or the World Bank – everyone told me, that they want to support youth programs and activities, but that they are simply missing the data, which would show why it is so important and how it could be done. So I thought, why don’t I devote my master thesis to doing such research if nobody else is doing it? I really don’t want to spend (at least) 6 months of my life, researching and writing a 100-page paper that will end up on my professor’s desk – or even worse in his trash bin. Given my interests (youth, MDGs…) youth employment also seemed to be an excellent combination of my studies and personal interests.

For that reason, I got in touch with someone from the Youth Employment Network I met in New York and discussed the possibility of working on a topic (in the field of youth employment) that would be useful for the network – and eventually would help build the case for young people themselves. The response I got so far from YEN is very positive and after a conversation with a consultant for the ILO, who is currently doing a big study on barriers and incentives to youth entrepreneurship, I was full of enthusiasm to devote my thesis to the cultural aspect of this. My idea was to identify cultural barriers and incentives to youth entrepreneurship in a few selected countries.

I must admit that I hadn’t put much thought into the methodology or even the concrete theoretical framework of it when I had the chance to talk to my professor about this idea today. I would have been more prepared if I had been to one of her office hours, but as her 1-hour/week office hour (not uncommon for German professors, some even offer only 2 hours/month) is usually booked well in advance, I just had to take the chance that I was the only person today, who showed up to a research colloquium she is holding… So I presented her my rough idea, but she was not at all impressed by it.

In her opinion, what I was planning to do was a dissertation, not a master thesis. She told me that the only purpose of the master thesis is “to show that you are able to work scientifically”. She also recommended me, not to conduct any interviews or in any form whatsoever collect data myself. Instead, I should devote myself to studying a theoretical approach within sociology and keep this topic for a possible dissertation later on.

Of course I wasn’t at all happy about her response. Not even so much about her arguments why it wouldn’t work (I actually thought she was right), but more about her attitude and the way she treated me. I was completely devastated and de-motivated after talking to her. It was such a typical scenario for me and proofed all my prejudices I have towards German professors: They simply don’t care at all about their students. First of all, she didn’t seem willing to help me at all. All she said was negative: this isn’t good, that isn’t good. But she wasn’t giving me any advice. What I would want from my professor is that he is like a mentor for me, that he gives me advice and helps out where I’m stuck. I was hoping my professor would help me with literature or the methodology by saying things like: why don’t you read this article here, and to make it more tangible you could change your question in this or that way, and why don’t you consider this or that methodology etc. Instead I had to keep asking her for every little piece I wanted to know and even then her answers were very brief (e.g. I asked what cultural theories I should look at and she told me about one single article). It’s not that I expect her to give me answers to everything, but she could at least lead me into the right direction.

But moreover, she had not a single positive word for my idea and the fact that I wanted to do something useful with my master thesis instead of writing a paper that nobody is interested in. On the contrary, I even had the feeling that she didn’t want me to be so “ab-normal”. This fits very well with a comment I received from a good friend of mine just recently who also spent quite a bit of time abroad and wrote to me about German universities (I translate): What really annoys me about German universities is the fact, that its only about fulfilling norms. Uniqueness and individuality are not being recognized at all and even less so rewarded (and he adds that this is the reason why we feel so free abroad, even in countries such as China – where we both studied together).

It’s quite frustrating to know that you only have so little support from the people who are called your "educators”. But I’m glad to have friends and other people I can turn to and who help me out. In fact, I just had a long conversation with a good friend of mine, and without giving me answers, everything became so much clearer to me. It’s just simple things – like knowing how to go about a research paper like a thesis or how to find the right literature – but exactly this is what they are not teaching you at German universities. So sad.

P.S.: Talking about (cultural) barriers to youth entrepreneurship... no wonder with such wanted uniformity at German universities that entrepreneurship isn't very popular in this country.

Too Marvelous for Words

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 18:47:00 EST

Too Marvelous for Words
Staring: A. Fielding and J. McGrath
Supporting actors: U. Nwosu, T. Dawkins, T. Akinsamni,
Produced by: F. Seel
Technical assistance: J. McGrath

WSIS – reflecting about a 3-year process

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:01:00 EST

I promised myself and Alberto (coordinator of the WSIS Youth Caucus communications group) to write a daily blog from Tunis, but after returning to Germany, I had to realize that I stopped reporting from WSIS on Wednesday. It is now hard for me to look back and recapture what happened, but I also don’t think that anyone, who didn’t have the chance to attend the Summit itself, is still interested in this. Instead I would like to use this blog to look back and reflect more broadly on what WSIS meant to me and TIG and so many other people.

I first joined the WSIS Youth Caucus during PrepCom 2 in Geneva, February 2003. I was volunteering for YOIS at that time and went to Geneva for a few days with a small team from Hamburg. We had a couple of projects running at YOIS that were connected to WSIS and later on became what was called the German National Information Society Youth Campaign. Looking back at the beginning of 2003, however, I first and foremost remember endless sessions with Maike, going through the draft outcome documents and making amendments with a focus on sustainable development. It was that work which taught me the structures of UN policy documents and how important a comma or slightly different phrase could be.

It is generally interesting to look back and see how much of the work of the Youth Caucus was focused on policy in Phase I, whereas it almost didn’t play a role at all anymore in Phase II. I would just like to mention the ups and downs at the Intersessional meeting in Paris, when the youth paragraph was garbled and only through the help of Abel from Fiji became the strong paragraph again that was adopted in December 2003.

The Youth Caucus was also my first real acquaintance with TakingITGlobal (I knew the organization since summer 2001, but never met any of its staff members). I met Nick and later on at the Summit itself also Jennifer and Mike, although I barely remember speaking a word to either of them – a strange thought as they are both dear friends of mine today.
Asking Nick for an internship opportunity in North America was how I ended up living in Toronto and working for TIG for 10 months. His response in early 2004 was: Why don’t you come to Toronto and work for TakingITGlobal? Yeah why not was my thought and so I went almost a year later, not knowing what I would be doing, how long I would stay and even with some doubts if I’m welcome by Mike and Jen.

WSIS has thus always been strangely connected to my personal life in a very intensive way. And no doubt that many other members of the Youth Caucus can say the same: Nick, Alex, Maja, Titi, Thomas – just to name a few. For all of us (I assume), WSIS has never been just a conference but so much more.
And even for TakingITGlobal itself: looking back three years, of course TIG was still very young at that time, but would it be today what it is without WSIS? I don’t think so.

But now that it is all over, the question is: what comes next? Where to go from here? You could here quite a few voices at WSIS asking for the recreation of YCDO and even more now than ever before, we need to take action and make reality what we promised the world we could do!
One of the greatest memories that I’ll keep from Tunisia are the moments I spent talking to ‘Gbenga about the youth initiatives in Nigeria. These are the initiatives we need, carried out with passion and the conviction that young people can make a change.

And of course there is the personal level as well. It will be quite a bit of a challenge to keep in touch over such great distances, but as we are all global citizens, I’m full of hope that one day I’ll see every single member of the Youth Caucus again somewhere.

P.S.: I’ve uploaded a few pictures from the Summit to my Flickr gallery – Enjoy!

Do we need all this security?

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:35:00 EST

It’s 7pm and I would have no problem falling asleep right here right now (I’m still in the youth hub). I went to bed yesterday night at 2am after “interviewing” ‘Gbenga Sesan from Nigeria about their National Information Society Campaign as preparation for a speech that I was giving today on behalf of the Youth Caucus.

But let me start in the early morning… It was the first day of the actual Summit and for some strange reason, there was only one bus going to Le Kram (the exhibition center) – at 7:30am! Too early for me, so Eman, Sofya, Jarra and I decided to take a cap together at 8:30am as we all had to be at the National Information Society panel, which started at 9am. What we didn’t expect was to find a huge line-up in front of the exhibition center. It took us 1,5 hours to get in!! But we still made it for the end of the panel and I was able to take a few pictures (as Titi and Robert had asked me to). After that I went to the Youth Hub, where I gave an interview to BBC about youth in the Information Society. I think the interview went well, although I found it a little strange that the woman was asking me mainly questions focused on the digital divide from the perspective of youth from developing countries. For example she asked what the most frustrating thing is for young people from developing countries in terms of the Internet. But how shall I know? I can guess certain things, based especially on the experience of working with TIG’s regional youth editors who have continuously trouble with their Internet speed. But at some point I really thought: Why is she asking me this and not a person from a developing country who knows the situation better? Oh well, lets see how the final story will actually look like…

After the interview, I had a coffee and prepared my speech for the afternoon. CONGO (Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in consultative relationship with the United Nations) had invited one speaker from the Youth Caucus to speak on National Level Best Practices from Civil Society in bridging the digital divide, and the Youth Caucus had chosen me to speak. As I had feared it would happen, however, I just received the confirmation yesterday and had no clue what I would be saying. So I ended up preparing my speech one hour before the event started…

The event was quite interesting though. In the session before mine about grassroots best practices, Geeta Malhotra from OneWorld South Asia was focusing her speech a lot about involving youth and especially getting educated young people to go into rural areas and train other young people there – exactly what the Youth Caucus did in some countries as part of their National Campaigns!

My panel actually had two high-level people on it: Nitin Desai, Special Advisor to UN Secretary General for WSIS and Shashi Tharoor, United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information. I had seen Shashi Tharoor speak at the UN DPI-NGO conference and just last week read an interview with him in the magazine of the German United Nations Association and I was really looking forward to meeting him. But of course he was just giving his speech and then rushing to another event. The only thing I could do was handing him an invitation to the World Summit Youth Awards while he was leaving the panel. Pretty sad that he didn’t stay longer – it would have been so cool if he had heard my presentation, which I think went quite well (Rik from CONGO and a few other people told me at least that I did a good job and that it was great to see my enthusiasm – Marc filmed it and I’ll for sure have a look at how I did later on).

After the presentation I went to the youth hub reception and just hang out in the hub, talking to people etc. At 5:30pm me, Eman and Luke wanted to leave to the World Youth Award, which was just a few meters away in another exhibition tent. However, the security guards had decided not to let anybody into the other tent anymore. It was a crazy scene with lots and lots of people trying to convince the guards that they need to go to the other tent, while at the same time pushing them further and further back. Some of them actually came up with crazy reasons why they had to go: “My bag is over there”, “I’m working at a booth in this tent” or “I’m speaking in the plenary right now and have to go there”. I guess, the way Luke finally got us through wasn’t much better, but pretty smart nevertheless. I had Jarra’s camera with me and Luke figured out that one of the security guys was letting media people through, so he just told him that I was a photographer and had to go to the awards ceremony.

About the rest of the evening there isn’t much interesting to say. But to end with a few general thoughts: I’m starting to feel very… how to say: in a cage? All the security people and the fact that there are only men in the street (well, 90%) makes me feel very uncomfortable. In the exhibition area and especially on the way there, I feel totally under control of some external force. And when I’m downtown I’m walking through the streets and feel that there are only guys sitting in the cafes and everyone is staring at me. I don’t like this feeling. I think I would really enjoy Tunisia a lot otherwise. Everything is clean and the old parts of cities are very beautiful. Also the weather is gorgeous and people are extremely friendly (especially to women ;-)

Let’s see what the end of the week brings…

Can someone please turn on the air conditioner?!

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:58:00 EST

After missing my shuttle bus in the morning and spending the time I had to wait in a nice street café downtown, I arrived at the exhibition center and to my surprise there were suddenly thousands of people. The last days, the exhibition center seemed like a ghost area, but this morning it was crowded with people.

Also the youth hub is extremely busy at all times. We have music running all the time, which attracts a lot of people to stay here, hang out and chat/network – and this even though there is no air conditioning in this part of the exhibition center, which means that the tent is heated up by the Tunisian sun and we all feel like in a sauna. It’s terrible and Nick has already started a petition, trying to collect signatures from other booths in this hall to protest against it.

Besides that, everyone seems to be busy running around, attending events, giving interviews. Personally though, I feel as I already did two years ago in Geneva: There are so many parallel events that I have a hard time figuring out where I want to go to. I think I need to make myself a proper plan for the next days, so that I don’t end up just hanging out at the youth hub…

Well, more soon – the Nigerians are taking over the youth hub now, showing a video about their projects Nigeria Rocks! which seems to be a fun event with great African music! Can’t miss it…

WSIS - let it begin!

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:21:00 EST

On Saturday night, Jennifer, Mike and I arrived in Tunisia for the World Summit on the Information Society. Marouen, Jarra and Kate were waiting for us at the airport and it was great to see them again. After arranging where all of our luggage would go, Mike, Jen, Jarra and I left to our Hotel Resort in Hammamet. The way there was actually quite amazing – it was raining and there were lightings every other minute. I had never seen so many and such impressive lightings before in my life! I wish I’d had the chance to try and take pictures of them – I’m sure I’d had the chance to catch a lighting, which would have been an impressive picture…

Our hotel was awesome as well and even though we went to bed at 5am, we decided not to miss the breakfast buffet, so we got up early and spent the rest of the morning lying at the pool and beach :-) In the afternoon we went to see the old fortress in Hammamet, before heading to Tunis to set up our booth. A lot of other people like Gbenga (who I finally met for the first time) and Abdallah were already there and helped us to set everything up.

Today, after a good night sleep, we spent the morning relaxing in our hotel again before moving to our new Hotels for the week in Tunis. Now I’m back at the Youth Hub, setting the last things up and preparing the Youth Pocket Guides, which were printed incorrectly and now all need to have a sticker put on them. Many other people (like Trevor and Moustafa) have arrived as well, so it’s nice to hang out and work together (or sit aside and write a blog as I’m doing right now :-P)

I actually have a positive feeling about the week ahead of us. I think that the Youth Caucus will do a good job; the booth is already a welcoming space for people to work and hang out, the materials and panels look amazing (great job Andrew and Chris!) and many of us will be organizing or speaking at different events, which will give young people a good visibility in this mass of parallel events going on this week.

Other news are not as positive: Heated discussions are still going on about who will govern the Internet and even big newspapers are picking up the discussion now with a lot of interest (for an article in German, check out Wie die USA die Weltherrschaft im Web verteidigen. It will be interesting to see who will “win this fight”: the US or “the rest of the world”? It’s very unfortunate though that this discussion is so prominent now, as the actual objective of the Summit (to come up with solutions how the digital divide can be bridged) is not being discussed at all anymore. It also shows how much power rich countries have in the United Nations, if they can so easily turn a global Summit - set up to help the poor - completely around and center the attention around an issue, which is barely of interest to any poor person on this globe…

Another issue being discussed widely among civil society is the situation in Tunis itself and the bad human rights record of the Tunisian government. Of course, this discussion has been going on ever since it was decided that Tunisia would host Phase II of the Summit, but now people are here, they see all the police that put up roadblocks every 100 meters and there have actually already been a few clashes, which are obviously heating up the discussion. One incident happened this morning, for example, when the police prevented organizers of the Citizen Summit, which will take place parallel to the Summit from Wednesday to Friday, to have a preparatory meeting in the Goethe Institute in Tunis (Tunisian authorities escalate conflict with civil society. Citizen Summit meeting blocked). Hopefully, there won’t be too many other such incidents or the Summit might even turn out to be a Summit about Tunisia, instead of a Summit in Tunisia…

In Memoriam Justice Egware

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 16:07:00 EST

In today's world where you are confronted almost every week with a new human tragedy - be it an earthquake in Pakistan or a tornado in the Caribbean - you start to become very distanced to any such kinds of tragedies. How different you suddenly feel when knowing some of the victims…

A few minutes ago I read through the news archive of the Millennium Campaign and found out that Justice Egware, National Co-ordinator of the MDG Campaign in Nigeria perished in the Boeing 737 flight from Lagos to Abuja that killed 117 people on Saturday 22 October.

A few weeks I met Justice Egware in New York. We had a long conversation during the Labor Day Parade on White Band Day II. We were walking down the streets of New York together, he told me about the amazing work the Campaign is doing in Nigeria and I told him about TakingITGlobal. We were planning to work more closely together, trying to figure out ways to get TIG’s huge membership in Nigeria involved in the GCAP/MDG Campaign in the country. Justice was a wonderful person, cheerful and warmhearted.

I’m devastated about the loss of Justice and his two colleagues, but I’m happy to read in my e-mails that Action Aid has planned a couple of programs to honor their colleagues, including a Family Support Fund for their families as well as a book publication and documentary about their lives.

The below text is taken from a GCAP e-mail, written by Kumi Naidoo on behalf of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty International Facilitation Group. The picture of Justice was taken by myself during the Labor Day Parade on September 10, 2005.

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Justice Egware (36) not only sustained the growth of the National Coalition on Education (CSACEFA) but also contributed to the building of the organisation as a strong force in educational issues in Nigeria with a view to bringing the ‘voice’ of civil society into national discourse. In addition, Justice was in the forefront of the struggle for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Nigeria through the MDG Campaigns and as GCAP Nigeria Coordinator. Activists across Africa will remember him as a powerful voice during the Africa Standing Tall against Poverty concert in Accra in the days before the UN World Summit. Any person who attended the concert or watched it on television will remember the powerful and immortal words he spoke on 3 September when he said, “Today, we are standing tall together to say No to Poverty! Africa is not a poor continent and we all agree that we are a generation that believes that poverty can be eradicated.” People will also recall how motivational he was at the UN World Summit and in the days thereafter at GCAP’s International Facilitation Group. Justice is survived by a wife and son.

Justice and John died on their return from publicising the GCAP cause that they deeply believed in. Justice died after launching the SMS campaign that would call more Africans to fight against poverty. We owe it to him to ensure that his death, and that of his comrades, was not in vain. Africans and anti-poverty activists worldwide owe it to his memory to ensure that MDGs are achieved and surpassed by 2015 and that the dire and abject poverty that plaques our world today will be replaced by another world in which justice reigns supreme.

I had the good fortune of working with Justice and all I can say is that he was one of the nicest people I have worked with. He had a lovely sense of humour and an engaging smile. My thoughts are with his family as I am sure he will be sorely missed. NICKY WIMBLE, OXFAM GB

I had breakfast with Justice during that first Johannesburg meeting in September 2004 when GCAP was created. He was one of the first African activists I had met there and his commitment and passion for his work were evident in every word we shared that morning. He and his colleagues will be sorely missed and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and loved ones. ERIN TUNNEY, INTERACTION

We owe Justice a firm request of the abovementioned investigation, just to be sure that the accident was just an accident, senseless and unexpected, that there is nothing that we could or should do about it but mourn, keep him with us and carry on. Anyway, these are just my personal reflections. For those of you who knew and loved Justice, whom I only met in NY last month, shook his hand and told him: "you people really have good names", I can only say that those to live up to their names brighten the world. PATRICIA GARCE

Apology

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 06:40:00 EST

Two weeks ago I moved into a new apartment. Besides my roomate I'm living with dozens of lady birds. They are everywhere and especially seem to like our bathroom. Yesterday I killed two of them :-( One fell into the toilet and I had to flush it. The other one was sitting in the basin when I - without seeing it there - turned on the water. I feel extremely guilty and would like to apologize to all lady birds.

A world away

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 17:31:00 EDT

Returning to a country that I once called home. Germany is a depressing place. People don’t have a smile on their face. They are full of frustration, full of bitterness and anger. Everyone is complaining; about our state, the government – be it the old one or the new one, which has not even started to govern yet. They complain about our bureaucracy, the fact that you have to pay 2,99 Euro when you call your local administration to get some basic info from them, about the unfriendliness of our civil servants. Everything is bad; everyone is evil. And the worst thing is: they are not even completely wrong. It is true that our state is in terrible conditions. Why can’t people be friendlier? Why did everything become so expensive since the introduction of the Euro? Why can’t shops and offices be open a little bit longer?

Germany is a country that is moving ahead in a snail's pace. It is the mentality of people. Everyone is unhappy with the current situation, but nobody has the guts to change anything. The federal election was the best example for this. Germans can only complain, but they don’t have any ideas how to change things for the better and even if they do, they wait for others to implement them. Germany is an un-dynamic place.

Meine Mutter sagt immer: Uns geht es allen noch nicht schlecht genug. Und Recht hat sie damit. Jeder meckert, dass alles so teuer ist. Aber ich laufe die Mönckebergstraße runter und muss mich durch Menschenmassen mit prallgefüllten Einkaufstaschen zwängen. Dabei schreibt der Economist sogar, dass es der deutschen Wirtschaft nur deshalb so schlecht geht, weil die Menschen nicht genug konsumieren. Wir müssen den Binnenmarkt ankurbeln, mehr ausgeben. Aber die Leute haben Angst und legen ihr Geld lieber zur Seite. Schon morgen könnte man arbeitslos sein. Eine reale Bedrohung? Ja. Aber wir sind doch selbst schuld daran. In keinem anderen Land erhält man so viel Arbeitslosengeld wie bei uns. Wir haben doch gar keinen so großen Anreiz mehr überhaupt noch zu arbeiten. Kein anderes Land hat so viele Feiertage wie Deutschland. Deutschland ist ein verwöhnter Ort.

Coming back to Germany after living abroad for two years is a challenging task. “Don’t let Germany bring you down” said a friend to me the other day, “I know how easy it does that.” But it was already too late. I felt like somebody had dropped me into a big black ocean of negative thoughts. I’m struggling to escape it and I know that I will. But it is a constant struggle, which is frustrating me. Everything in this country is a struggle. Nothing is easy. Germany is a complicated place.

I feel a world away. From where I was a week ago, from where I want to be, and from where I think my place in this world is. A few days in this country and I’m more aware than ever before that I won’t grow old here. I’m here only as long as I have to. Then I’m gone again.
I always had the endeavour to leave Germany and I always thought I just wanted to encounter new countries, new cultures, new languages. I wanted to learn how this world smells, how it feels and sounds. But before I eventually left, I met a guy who told me that people never just leave because they are reaching out to something new. They are always leaving because they also want to run away from something. And he told me that I as well am running away from something. And maybe it was this I was running away from. This black ocean of negative thoughts. All the sad faces. All this talk about “yes, we want to change” - without changing anything.

Ich habe mir ein Buch gekauft: Die Erde ist ein gewalttätiges Paradies von Ryszard Kapuscinski. In diesem Buch schreibt der große polnische Reiseschriftsteller folgendes:

„In den fünfziger und sechziger Jahren war Europa für mich ein starres Gefüge, das geteilt war in Ost und West. Da gab es die kommunistischen, von der Sowjetunion beherrschten Länder Osteuropas und die unabhängigen, entwickelten Länder Westeuropas. Für mich war klar, dass Europa sehr, sehr lange undynamisch sein würde. Ich wollte aber über dynamische, konfliktive Situationen schreiben. Europa war für mich schlicht zu langweilig. Ich war auch nicht fähig, über die Entwicklungen in Polen zu schrieben. Ich musste an Orte gehen, wo es große Auseinandersetzungen gab. Ich kam nur nach Polen zurück, um Bücher zu schreiben. Aber bereits bei der Ankunft dachte ich schon an die Abreise.
In der Dritten Welt hingegen fand ich meine Freiheit. So war ich allein in der Sahara oder im Dschungel von Afrika oder in den Bergen von Lateinamerika. Dort fühlte ich mich als freier Mann, ich war auf mich gestellt und konnte tun, was ich wollte.“

I was already thinking about my departure when I arrived. Of course there are things I like about Germany, about Europe in general. The city I live in is so much more beautiful than any North American city could ever be. Walking through my little hometown, seeing buildings that are several hundred years old, just gives me a feeling of peace. I appreciate the culture. Having a good breakfast with fresh-baked bread rolls and the morning newspaper is something I missed a lot. But at the same time while I’m sitting at my breakfast table I have to think about all the people in the world who are starving, who don’t have anything to eat, who can’t even read the morning newspaper because they never had the opportunity to go to school. Knowing about this, makes me feel a world away from where I should be. Germany is not the place where things are changing. But I want things to change and I want to be part of this change. That’s why I have to leave this country. As soon as possible.

WPAY review - day IV V

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:37:00 EDT

I’m sitting at Newark airport, waiting for my flight back to Toronto, which is 2 hours delayed – a good moment to sit down and write a last update about the events at the UN this week.

Thursday saw the General Assembly review of the World Programme of Action for Youth. There were quite a few really good speeches from youth delegates. My favorite two were from Erik, the Dutch Youth Delegate (no wonder, as Ben and I have been helping him edit his speech :-P) and Victoria, the Norwegian Youth Delegate. Erik focused his speech on youth unemployment and Victoria, who is a refugee from Rwanda, on the rights of young immigrants – because of her personal background, it was probably the most touching speech of all.

There were also quite a few disappointing speeches though. The Canadian one, to name just one example, sounded more like a speech written by the Canadian government, rather than a youth speech. A lot of people were also missing the passion and vision that I would youth delegates expect to have. But in general it was good to see so many young people speak at such a high-level forum.

On Friday, we did the last preparations for our side-event on “Strengthening youth participation in decision-making”. The event was in my opinion a great success. We first had Renaldas and Joao from the European Youth Forum speak about the EYF and National Youth Councils, and more concretely the co-management system as an excellent example of youth participation on a national and regional level. After that I talked about the World Summit on the Information Society Youth Caucus (and of course showed parts of our movie) and Jen added to it by talking more broadly about how ICTs enable youth participation in decision-making (using the Youth Caucus as an example). I also officially launched the revamp of our VOICE section.
The third case study of successful youth participation in decision-making was presented by Leif from the EYF, who talked about the CSD Youth Caucus. Originally we had invited Emily to talk about the ad-hoc working group on Youth and the MDGs, which came out of the CSD Youth Caucus, but unfortunately, she couldn’t join us and so I took on her part as well. Lastly, Erik and Hanna, the Swedish Youth Delegate, talked about their role as Youth Delegates and how they were selected.

I believe we had a great and inspiring program, outlining many different ways of how youth can effectively influence decision-making on various levels. Joop, the head of the UN Youth Program, was there to make a few closing remarks and he used the chance to look back at the week and reflect about what was good and what could have been better. I think, one outstanding remark that many of us had observed and critiqued ourselves, was the absence of adults. It almost seemed as all the countries, which had sent youth delegates, were now thinking: well, if we have our youth at the events, then we don’t need to go there anymore ourselves. But of course, if this is what is happening, then we don’t need youth delegates. If at the end, young people are sitting in the UN General Assembly, presenting great speeches but ending up talking again just to each other – then, what is the purpose of this exercise? Young people need a place in government delegations to the GA, so that they can raise their voice and tell these governments why youth participation is important and how they can work together with young people for a better future of their countries.

The week ended with many of us going Salsa dancing to a club in Lower East Side. It was a fantastic evening and indeed a grand finale of a very productive week for me.

The picture shows me and Jen in the General Assembly hall. For more pictures of the week, pleas have a look at my online photo album.

WPAY review - day II III

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:29:00 EDT

My days here at the UN are long and packed. I usually leave the house in the morning at 9am and don’t get back home before 11pm. So, as I already assumed, it’s not as easy to keep up with writing about the events going on here… But I’ll try to write a short summary at least with the highlights of the last two days:

Yesterday, I attended the Launch of the World Youth Report 2005, parts of the 3rd Committee meeting session and a wonderful evening event, which was organized by the UN Youth Program. They had invited a theater group from a local school in Newark, NJ, which performed a theater play on the topic of addiction and drug abuse. It was really cool! The actors were amazing and we had lots of fun after the event when Jen, Leif and I taught the kids Swedish and German! The picture shows the three of us with some of the kids – I really enjoyed the evening a lot!!

Today, Jen and I first had a meeting with the Millennium Campaign, to wrap up our partnership – which obviously, had nothing to do with WPAY. After that I had lunch with a very good friend from Germany – we had run into each other by complete chance yesterday, both not knowing that we are currently at the UN (she is doing an internship here). It was really great to see her and catch up! During lunch time I attended a side-event of the Swedish Youth Council, where Jan Eliasson, the new President of the 60th General Assembly, as well as the Swedish Youth Minister were speaking. In the afternoon I went to the roundtable discussion on “Making commitments matter”, where Romi, our regional youth editor, was speaking!! The evening saw another great event with the screening of the MTV documentary “The diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa” and dinner with the guys from the European Youth Forum as well as a few others.

One of the key messages that I took out of the different discussions and events was about youth in the media: I believe in different side-events there was the talk about how young people are presented in the media and that it is mostly in a negative way. This is surely not something new to me, but it is still worth thinking about it again. As it was said during the launch of the World Youth Report 2005, the negative picture of young people in the media is actually discouraging youth about their role in society. Also, during the Swedish side-event today it was said that if people see that they are part of the society and that they have actually something to contribute and they have self-esteem, then they might be much more entrepreneurial. Thus, if you make the connection, more positive news about youth in mainstream media and more recognition of the capabilities of young people could contribute to strategies of tackling youth unemployment.

Finally, a quote that inspired me today: Jan Eliasson (who I already much liked during the DPI/NGO conference) said today: You need to have two things if you want to achieve something in life – roots and wings. Roots to remember where you come from and what makes you different from other people (your culture, your history, your family and friends), and wings to fly away and do things that others haven’t done before.

I was also very positively surprised by the Angolan chair-person of the civil society cluster during the roundtable discussion this afternoon. He seemed to be an immense supporter of youth participation, but he also made a really funny comment when he said that youth seem to be taking-over the institution (he meant the UN) with this roundtable! Why was that funny? Well, I thought it was, because it showed me how old and bureaucratic the UN is, if people think that this tiny bit of interaction that the roundtable allowed (in opposite to the usual meetings with solely prepared speeches), was already showing that young people are taking over the institution! If this is really the case, then there is much more need of youth taking over as soon as possible, as I had already thought before!

WPAY review - day I

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 21:51:00 EDT

My first day at the ten-year review of the World Programme of Action for Youth at the UN Headquarters in New York and I’m actually surprised that I find the time and energy to write down some impressions of this long day.

I arrived at the UN at 10am this morning to set up our MDG traveling arts exhibition. After just 30 minutes I had to make a terrible encounter: Somebody had stolen our guestbook :-( I was so disappointed about this and honestly couldn’t believe how rude people are to steal something in the UN building. You would assume that the people walking around in this building are all just honest diplomats working for the UN itself or national governments. But no… I just hope that nobody is going to steal some of the artwork as well. I don’t want to go home with empty hands after this one week.

As I had to set up the exhibition, I was too late to attend the opening plenary this morning, so I decided to work a bit afterwards and I had a good conversation with the representatives of the European Youth Forum, with whom we are going to organize a side-event this Friday on “Strengthening youth participation in decision-making”.

During the lunch break I attended the side-event organized by ICMYO (the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organizations) on “Global and Regional Youth – Experiences with the WPAY”. There were two speakers from UN agencies at the event (a person from the Youth Employment Network of the ILO and a representative of UNICEF). The other people were speakers from the European Youth Forum, the World Organization of the Scout Movement, the International Movement of Catholic Students (Pax Romana) and the World Alliance of YMCAs. Two things that I found interesting at the event and that I would like to share here:
1.) The ILO is sending out a call to all youth organizations this week to submit them case studies of how youth organizations on a local level are addressing the problem of youth unemployment. ILO wants to collect about 20-30 best practices that they will compile in a report. I thought this is a really good opportunity for young people (especially those involved in YES country networks) to highlight and get some recognition for their projects. So if you are working on youth employment, please watch out the ILO/YEN website this week!
2.) The representative from the Scouts was talking about their HIV/AIDS program and I was actually quite impressed by the work they are doing on the ground. One example that I really liked was, that the Scouts are giving out red ribbons, which Scouts can put on their uniforms after successfully completing a training course on HIV/AIDS. The red ribbon also entitles the Scouts who receive it to train other young people themselves afterwards. I think this is a great way of promoting these training/education courses as well as peer-to-education. Maybe something for other organizations to copy (even TIG ourselves)? I honestly believe that giving out “certificates” or similar objects of recognition is a great way of getting young people involved in something…

After the side-event I had a quick lunch and then planned on attending the official session of the Third Committee (where youth issues are being discussed), but to my surprised, when I went there around 4pm, nobody was left in the room (the meeting was supposed to go from 3-6pm). In the hallway, I met a very disappointed Joop (head of the UN Youth Program) who told me that there hadn’t been any more speakers, so the meeting had closed early. You could really see the frustration in his face about how little member states apparently cared about youth policies… It was indeed a shame.

In the end, I spent the rest of my afternoon talking to Leif Holmberg (from the European Youth Forum). We had a very fruitful conversation in my opinion about global youth politics and the structures of youth participation.

In the evening we headed to a movie screening that the UN Youth Program had organized and to my surprise I just entered the room when Julie introduced the WSIS video that TIG had produced! It was so great to see – many of the youth reps were there and I was really happy that they had decided to show it (although I was not too happy about the fact that she chose exactly the part of the movie where I’m speaking on the National Information Society Youth Campaigns…). In fact, Julie came to me after the meeting and almost apologized for showing the video without asking TIG before for permission – but really, what should we have against it? This is what the video was made for and I was really excited to see it shown at the UN.
They also showed another excellent video that the Australian Youth Delegate from last year had produced about her work as youth delegate – it was very inspiring to see and demonstrated me again how many more such videos we need in order to get the message across that youth can meaningfully contribute to decision-making processes!

What followed was a really interesting discussion about the work of the youth delegates and now I’m waiting for all of them to finally leave the UN building and have a beer to end this first day full of events, debates and interesting conversations about the future of youth participation…

More from the WPAY review soon…

Where will we all be in 20 years from now?

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:42:00 EDT

Although I have a subscription of The Economist since almost 3 years now, I believe I haven't read more than a handful of articles from the "Technology Quarterly" - which, as they name predicts, updates the readers of the magazine four times a year about new technologies in all kinds of areas.

Two days ago, I was holding another issue in my hands which included a Technology Quarterly, but this time my eyes stopped at an article titled "Sailing ships with a new twist" - right, my hidden passion: container ships ;-)

The reason why my eyes stopped at the article and I couldn't but read it was that I knew the company this article was talking about. A couple of years ago, I met Stephan Wrage, head of SkySails at one of our joint board meetings between YOIS and the Global Contract Foundation. I remember how he was telling us about his idea of building kites that would be like sails for huge ships and thus reduce emissions and save fuels. It was a great idea and he had an amazing knowledge about the emissions which are produced each year by ships and how nobody really cares doing anything about this massive pollution of our atmosphere.
2-3 years ago, he was at a point in his career where he had a perfect idea in his head, a detailed construction plan - everything, except the money to build the first prototype of the kite.

Then I left YOIS and Germany and for more than two years I didn't hear anything about SkySails until I found this article in the Economist two days ago.

But why am I writing about this? Well, I guess it just showed me how fast it can happen that somebody you know has a great idea and suddenly becomes famous or at least you read about him or her in a renown magazine. When I was younger, artists, renown scientists, academics, politicans - all these people you see on TV and read about in newspapers, they all seemed to be so old, so far away from my life, so untouchable. But over the last years I had to realize that sooner or later, a lot of my friends will become exactly this: renown artists, scientists, academics and politicans!

I still remember how much I hated my German teacher in grade 9 who used to tell us every second week that we are the future leaders of our country. I thought that she wasn't right implementing this idea in our heads, but now I have to admit that I'm thinking the same way: Looking around me and seeing all these brilliant people here at TIG and meeting all these brilliant people at youth conferences I go to, I have to say: We are the future leaders of our countries! And I can't wait to be 20 years older to see where it actually got all of us. What will we all be doing in 20 years? How many of us will be Nobel leaureates? How many will be ministers or ambassadors in our countries?

Well, you might find this as stupid now as I found my German teacher in grade 9 saying these things. But really, seeing this article about a person I know got me thinking a lot about these things...

Here is the article by the way - in case container ships are actually somebodys passion on this site ;-)

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Sailing ships with a new twist
Sep 15th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Transport: Giant kites that act like sails could bring wind propulsion back to ocean-going ships, reducing emissions and saving on fuel costs

IN THE first half of the 19th century, ships began to adopt steam engines, first alongside and then instead of sails. Today, wind propulsion is for sportsmen and romantics, not shipping firms trying to make money. But the high price of oil and stricter pollution regulations are strong forces working to turn back the clock. Wind propulsion is coming back in a new form: kites, not sails. Next year, SkySails, a German firm based in Hamburg, will begin outfitting cargo ships with massive kites designed to tug vessels and reduce their diesel consumption. The firm estimates that these kites will reduce fuel consumption by about one-third—a big saving, given that fuel accounts for about 60% of shipping costs.
The idea of reintroducing sails to modern ships is not new. A Japanese consortium tried it in the 1970s, but got nowhere. In the 1990s, the Danish government launched Project WindShip, but it was scuttled in 1998. Other teams met failure, too. The insurmountable problem in each case proved to be the mast.
In unfavourable winds, large masts create a lot of drag. In gales, masts cause ships to heel, sometimes dangerously. Masts and their pivoting sails take up valuable container space on the deck. Loading and unloading is more expensive, since the cranes that lift containers must work around the masts. Engineers designed taller (and more expensive) masts, some exceeding 100 metres in height, to reduce their number and limit the loss of storage space. But the Panama Canal limits masts to 60 metres, and collapsible masts would be prohibitively expensive to build, operate and service.
Knud E. Hansen, the naval engineering firm based in Copenhagen that led Project WindShip, designed high-tensile steel masts with foldable carbon-fibre sails, known as vertical aerofoils because they generate horizontal thrust just as aeroplane wings create lift. The cost of retrofitting a cargo ship with a row of masts, and strengthening its hull and deck to dissipate the additional stress, was estimated at euro10m ($12.5m). So the sails would have taken around 15 years to recoup their costs through fuel savings.
But the SkySails approach does away with masts and is much cheaper. The firm says it can outfit a ship with a kite system for between €400,000 and €2.5m, depending on the vessel's size. Stephan Wrage, the boss of SkySails, says fuel savings will recoup these costs in just four or five years, assuming oil prices of $50 a barrel. Jesper Kanstrup, a senior naval architect at Knud E. Hansen, says the idea of pulling a ship with an inexpensive kite—attached to the structurally solid bow like a tugboat—had never occurred to him. “It's a good idea,” he says.
SkySails' kites are made of a type of nylon similar to that used in the sails of modern windjammers, but they fly between 100 and 300 metres above sea level, where winds are less turbulent and, on average, more than 50% stronger than the winds that sails capture. An autopilot computer adjusts the height and angle of the kite, the surface area of which can range from 760 to 5,000 square metres. When the wind blows too strongly, one end of the rectangular kite is released so that the kite flaps like a flag. A powerful winch retrieves the kite when necessary.
Regulators, as well as cost savings, could boost the technology. For while both Europe and America have strict regulations on vehicle pollution, ships have enjoyed something of a free ride. Moving one tonne of goods one kilometre by ship, for example, releases about 225 times as much sulphur as trucking the goods the same distance, according to the Secretariat on Acid Rain, a Swedish pressure group. Mario Dogliani, the head of research at RINA, an organisation based in Genoa that inspects and certifies ships, says European regulators are “really pushing” for tougher emission controls, backed up with stiff fines, for shipping. “We need to innovate,” he says.
In May, the International Maritime Organisation's new rules on marine pollution took effect. They require many ships to switch to a low-sulphur fuel that costs 50% more than traditional (and highly polluting) fuel oil. And an increasing number of ports now offer discounts for ships with approval labels, called Green Passports, awarded by environmental groups. It all adds up to a favourable wind for SkySails.

Jamaica?

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:12:00 EDT

I already really enjoyed pre-election advertisements in Germany (like Merkelwitze) and was almost a bit sad not to be in the country over the last weeks, but after Germany’s federal election yesterday, reading the newspapers is almost even more hilarious.
Both major parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) reached about the same percentage of votes, with the leading opposition party lead by Angela Merkel just about 1% or 3 parliament seats ahead of Schroeder’s SPD. This deadlock of votes means that a big discussion about coalition building has started in Germany (for a good overview of possible coalitions have a look at the Guardian’s Jostling at the traffic lights). One possibility is a “Jamaica coalition” made up of the Christian Democrats (black), the Greens and the Free Democrats (Yellow) – which of course has already inspired a lot of people to come up with funny advertisements and jokes.
One of them is an advertisement of a phone company called 11880.com which I found on the website of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The ad shows Angela Merkel waving a little Jamaican flag and asks visitors to click on the ad to find cheap flights for Angie to Jamaica.
In another article of the German newspaper Der Spiegel a bout the outcome of the election a picture of palm trees is shown, subtitled: “Simply beautiful: Beaches, lots of sun-shine and a new romance. Is it possible for three as well?”
The webforum of the Green party has more serious discussions to offer about Jamaica. One entry warns that the party should have a closer look at the flag, which has two black and two green triangles while the rest of the flag is being dominated by a big yellow cross. Therefore, if such a coalition becomes reality, so the author of the forum entry, he would leave the party. For all of you who speak German, I really recommend having a look at the webforum of the Green party or any other webforums of German’s main political parties – if it wouldn’t be such a serious topic, it would make for a good evening entertainment!
Lastly, I found it very amusing that Marcia Y. Gilbert-Roberts, Ambassador of Jamaica to Germany, told the Financial Times Deutschland today that, in case CDU, FDP and the Greens decide upon a Jamaica-Coalition, they would all be warmly welcome to her country!
I really can’t wait to find more stuff like that popping up on the Internet and in the news over the next days! And to all of you I can only say: don’t wonder if you get a lot of links to German websites when googling for Jamaica over the next days – we Germans are just a little crazy, especially during times like these ;-)

Reflections upon NGOs

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 00:11:00 EDT

Over the last couple of days I attended a few plenary sessions and midday side-events of the 58th Annual United Nations DPI/NGO conference, which took place from September 7th to 9th in New York.

Attending these session, but also talking to many friends of mine over the last couple of weeks, have made me think quite a lot about NGOs, their strength, their weaknesses and their role in shaping policy and creating change in the world.

I believe, my thoughts are mostly spinning around the questions of effectiveness and legibility. To begin with: I’m a big fan of NGOs – otherwise I wouldn’t have devoted so much of my time over the last years to NGO work. However, I also started to doubt a lot about the effectiveness, credibility and legibility of a lot of NGOs.

I guess, a conversation I had with a very good friend of mine a few weeks ago in London, has a lot to do with this. When I asked him, why he isn’t a member of TIG yet, he told me that he doesn’t believe in NGOs anymore. First, I was very surprised and shocked, especially because I knew that he had worked for several NGOs over the last years as well. But then he started to explain me. Coming from Mexico, he told me that a lot of NGOs in his country and Latin America in general, are very corrupt and he questioned the impact they are actually having. We had quite a long discussion about this and of course, I was arguing against him.

But to be honest: Isn’t it true that a lot of people use NGOs for their own benefit? This doesn’t necessarily mean that most NGOs are corrupt, but working for an NGO makes also a good reference in a person’s C.V. and I’ve come across quite a few C.V. in which people listed NGOs that are probably not much more than mailboxes somewhere.

In fact, it was very interesting to hear Peter Hesse, one of the speakers at a side-event yesterday, being very blunt about this as well. Sitting in a room with more than 50 NGO representatives, he said very frankly that many NGOs, especially in the developing world, are just trying to get money from aid agencies or governments with beautifully written project proposals, but without actually doing anything good for their local communities.

But leaving even those few corrupt or only on the paper existing NGOs aside, I’m still wondering: how much impact do those NGOs have that are actually doing work?

Of course, there are some NGOs which are doing amazing work and who have probably saved thousands of lives and inspired many more people to become active citizens in their communities. But aren’t there also many others who are just talking, talking, talking – without actually having any real impact? Aren’t we all just talking too much?

In the closing speech of the conference today, Kofi Anna said, that what is more important than the contribution of NGOs to UN conferences is what the NGOs are doing in their local communities. And I don’t think that he wanted to say with this, that NGOs shouldn’t have a place at the UN (on the contrary, he was actually opening his speech saying that he believes, one of the great achievements of the UN during his 9-year term of SG so far has been the increasing involvement of NGOs in UN decision-making processes). However, I believe, and I can only agree with him, that he wanted to say that NGOs have a much greater impact on local levels, working with people, improving the lives of communities, than on the global level. And again, this doesn’t mean that NGOs shouldn’t have a seat at the global discussions of the UN. But what the world needs are NGOs that are not only good in talking, but that are even better in doing the work, that governments so often neglect or simply don’t have the capacity to fulfill.

Another interesting point that was made in the plenary meeting today, although addressed to governments, was about UN outcome documents. In his speech, Jan Eliasson, President-Elect of the 60th session of the UN General Assembly, said that governments should more often do “field tests” of UN documents. He meant that before talking hours and hours about moving a comma or a paragraph in a declaration, they should ask themselves what real impact the moving of this comma actually has for the people of their countries.
But, even though he talked about governments here, his comment criticizes in a similar way the focus on words, instead of focusing on the people and how words can actually be translated into real and effective ways of helping these people.

Well, I guess I could continue writing many more pages about NGOs – maybe I should make it my master thesis topic, then I can write 100 pages about it :-) But I would also be interested to hear the opinion of others. What is your experience with NGOs in your country? What role should they play in the future? Where are ways for improvement?

Some questions about the US and foreign aid...

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:09:00 EDT

It’s really interesting to follow the news these days about whether the US should ask foreign countries to send aid for the Katrina hurricane victims.

The latest article that I found about the discussion is this one in the USA Today.

There are a few statements in the article, which really made me laugh. First of all consider this: “Venezuela, a target of frequent criticism by the Bush administration, offered humanitarian aid and fuel.” Can you imagine? One of America’s greatest enemies is offering the country aid and fuel – and apparently, the US is accepting it.

But at the same time, Russian aid seems to be unwelcome: “However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.” – Back to the Cold War?

And then there is the general question of whether the US should accept foreign aid at all – after reading through the latest amendments made by US ambassador Bolton to the draft outcome document of the Millennium Summit, which is going to take place in 10 days in New York, one must be convinced that the US doesn’t believe in aid, so it actually makes sense that Bush is playing all cool, saying that they never asked for aid (but of course wouldn’t reject it, if countries really want to offer some cash…):

“Still, Bush told ABC-TV: ‘I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it.’

‘You know,’ he said, ‘we would love help, but we're going to take care of our own business as well, and there's no doubt in my mind we'll succeed. And there's no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.’"

It seems like Bush is almost to proud to accept anything from foreign countries… Or maybe he is just afraid of those countries asking for a favor in return later on?

Are all men rapists?

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 15:03:00 EDT

Sorry guys for the catchy subject line.... I had an actually very nice experience yesterday that I wanted to share with you - especially because it made me ask myself a few questions…

Yesterday evening I took the airport express bus to pick up a friend, who is visiting me for a couple of days, at Toronto's airport. I was the only person on the entire bus. After we drove for a few minutes, the bus driver was asking me if I would like to have some ice cream. As I was actually pretty hungry and knew that I had nothing to eat at home I told him that I would love to have some ice cream if he had some. He then told me to follow him and we left the bus to a nearby street-vendor, where he bought me a delicious scoop of vanilla butter-scotch ice cream -yummy ☺ !

After I had told him that I would love to have some ice cream I felt quite awkward though for a moment. I was remembering the words of my mum, that probably every girl is been told when a child: "Never say yes if an older man wants to buy you ice cream!". I later regretted and felt ashamed that I had this thought at all. I mean this guy was so nice, he didn't know me at all, but he wanted to get some ice-cream for the late night drive out to the airport and so he invited me, his only passenger, for a scoop as well. But instead of being grateful, the first thing that came to my mind after agreeing, was that he might want to buy me ice-cream to kidnap me afterwards… how ridiculous!

However, it's weird how little things like this sentence keep stuck in your mind. I believe I'm old enough now to take care of myself, but still I remember these words of my mum and apparently they still seem to make me distrust people who just want to be nice to me. Isn’t it sad?

What would interest me is if guys ever feel the same way? I could imagine that it's a problem that only girls have, as we get educated in a way that make us be afraid of men, who must always be seen as possible rapists. I really don’t like to think that way, but if you are always told as a young girl, that there are men out there who want to kidnap and rape you, then you don’t easily forget about this. Are there any guys here who want to share some thoughts on this question? Maybe it’s also just a cultural thing and girls from other cultures are not being educated in that way?

I'm doing something big today and crash an airplane near the government...

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:23:00 EDT

I received the folllowing news bit this morning with the Berlin briefing of the Economist:

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No-fly zone

Germany's government has banned private pilots from flying over central Berlin after a first-world-war replica plane crashed near government buildings on July 22nd, sparking fears of a terrorist attack. Police identified the dead pilot as Volker Klawitter, a man who had been under investigation over the disappearance of his wife (her body was later found at Mr Klawitter's home in East Berlin). Mr Klawitter is reported to have told a neighbour he was going to do something big that day.

Opposition politicians were quick to criticise security around the Reichstag and Federal Chancellery. From now onwards, unarmed police helicopters will be stationed outside the city to deal with potential suicide attacks. The hot-air balloon in Potsdamer Platz, which offers tourists views of Berlin, was also grounded—but rose again on August 5th after the city decided to treat it as an exceptional case.
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Why do poeple still think that doing something stupid like crashing an airplane near a government building (not to mention, killing your own wife...) is "something big"????? I wish people who are trying to catch some attention would rather direct their energies to being real martyrs by changing the world to the positive... Oh well...