COE Reports from EYES Summer Camp

COE NETHERLANDS PARTICIPATES WITHIN THE EYES SUMMER CAMP - EUROPEAN YOUTH FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND PEACE

The summer camp of EYES was really great! EYES stands for Empowering Youth in a European Society and is a network of young European citizens pursuing active self-empowerment. During the week within France there were many people from different cultures and organizations, as well as political flavors. Most of them were local youth organizations like for example the Bulgarian Youth parliament, the Occupy movement, an organization that helps gypsies while coping with daily life in Hungaria or environmental organizations like Greenpeace. Also I was very pleased to meet with and hear about the activities on visiting nature from Children of the Earth Scotland where they have been taking a group of young people to the wilderness and spent some time for inner learning there. Emmanuel from Children of the Earth Scotland and Australia has been giving a wonderful meditation session which was about positive thinking. Completely within the spirit of Children of the Earth! The first day we spent some time on talking about daily politics and huge global social movements like Occupy, Anonymous and analyzed their structure and value-based learning on horizontally and inclusiveness. There were speakers from Occupy Wallstreet and the Independent Greek Debt Audit Committee from which I sincerely support the goals of their actions. Occupy Wallstreet is a protest movement that began in New York City’s financial district and became know worldwide through their actions against the social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the influence of large cooperation’s on the government policy of the United States. The Independent Greek Debt Audit Committee calls for the establishment of a Public Commission to examine the debts that lie at the root of the Greek crisis. The commission would have to look more closely at the legality and the legitimacy of those debts while serving the goal to negotiate better terms and hold accountable those responsible for the crisis.

Some days later there has been a very interesting session where a woman from South-Africa has been reading to us a story from a book about Shell polluting the Niger Delta and the history of the West extracting oil from the African countries without taking into account the interests of the local people while exploiting them for their own good. So true and something we don’t like to speak about much within the Netherlands as our government largely depends on the income taxes deducted from the large scale selling of petrol by the tank stations of this company. Next to that there has been the chance to join some sessions with real interesting organizations like Eradicating Ecocide. “Ecocide is the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished"(see for more information the website of Eradicating Ecocide). The goal of Eradicating Ecocide is to make ecocide the fifth crime against peace within the United Nations.

The camp which has been located in Le Marais Poitevin close to Poitou Charente has been taken care of very well by the owner of the eco-camping (famous for it’s dry toilets that save 1,5 litres of water every time you go to the toilet), the organization of EYES and Les Petites Debrouillards. Les Petites Debrouillard is and organization that wants to democratize science and learn from each other while being involved within society. The most of the people from this organization were of French origin and were doing volunteer work in order to serve the local and international community.The first days we spent on a simulation game from the Social World Forum which also has been an interesting learning experience. Another activity is that we have been practicing on a street action in La Rochell. For the local French people in the village we have organized a political debate followed by a dinner and a European party. It was a great success and the Major and the people from the municipality have been visiting our party, as well as many citizens from the French village. Together we have been dancing until late hours with the local villagers. The last days would be spent on the organization of a large European even for which there has been written a call and has been prepared a plan for the coming months.