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Stockholm, Sweden! Part II

Of course, being in Stockholm we grabbed the opportunity to meet with some interesting and inspiring people and organizations.

We started off Thursday in a busy downtown café talking to Ebba Åkerman, a young Swedish woman who while doing her Master’s thesis came up with the idea behind “United Invitations”. The concept behind the idea was simple: people who speak Swedish fluently were asked if they were interested in inviting learners of Swedish to their home for a dinner. This was meant not only to advance their Swedish-skills, but to make them more familiar with Swedish culture, feel more welcome in Sweden, and in turn to make the hosts more familiar with their new citizens.

The idea, which started off as a Facebook posts on Ebba Åkerman’s personal page, connecting her own students of Swedish with her established Swedish friends, turned out to be a success, and today 10 000 people have hosted or been guests at dinners of this type; not only in Sweden but also in Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom. Well over 90% of both hosts and guests experience the dinners as a success, and report that they have a better understanding of each other’s cultures after having dinner with each other.

United Invitations is in short about food, language and social interaction. For Åkerman herself, one of the things that drew her to the idea was its simplicity. Making dinner for someone and going to someone’s house for dinner are ordinary, every-day things that most of us experience regularly. What better way to make people get together than that?

The students were clearly fascinated by United Invitations, and bombarded Åkerman with questions regarding the concept. She finished the talk by handing out buttons with the UI logo, and with a call for the students to spread the idea to their home towns when they return to the US.

After our talk with Åkerman, we hadded to the headquarters of the Social Democratic party in Svevagen. Here we were greeted by "Landsorganisationen", the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. Landsorganisationen is the umbrella organization for fourteen Swedish trade unions that organize mainly blue-collar workers. It represents about 1,5 million employees, and was founded in 1898 on the initiative of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, with whom it is heavily linked to this day. We were guided through the history of the Swedish labor movement and told us about the works and significance of LO in Swedish society.

The next day, we left our hostel in the center of Stockholm and headed out to Saltsjöbaden, a picturesque locality in the suburbs of Stockholm. We walked around for an hour or so, taking in impressions from the area; quiet and rich in greenery with stately wooden homes and mansions abound. It was obvious that we found ourselves in an affluent part of town.

After talking about our impressions of Saltsjöbaden, we headed to nearby Fisksätra. Although Fisksätra and Saltsjöbaden are located just across the pond from each other, in the same municipality, the difference between the localities are stark. The large villas of Saltsjöbaden were replaced with apartment complexes and public housing. The local shopping center greeted us with grocery, jewelry and cellphone-shops advertising goods and items from a number of foreign countries, from Pakistan to Ghana to Poland. Not too strange perhaps, as, as we were told later, Fisksätra has inhabitants from over 70 different nationalities. In Swedish media, Fisksätra is often labelled a “problem-area”, however, because of its relatively higher crime and unemployment rates in comparison to the rest of the country. The ethnic and religious diversity of the place has also been deemed a problem by especially the Swedish Democrats.

We met three people who were eager to prove the Swedish Democrats wrong in this regard. Carl Dalbäck, vicar of the Swedish Church, Awad Olwan, an imam from Nacke municipality's Muslim association, and Stefan Herczfeld of the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm have a history of getting Muslims and Christians of Fisksätra together. After years of arranging various Muslim-Christian prayers in improvised locations in Fisksätra, they came up with the idea of constructing one common place of worship for all three faiths. This place is to be called "Guds hus" (House of God), and is envisioned to serve as an example that peace and coexistence is the way to the reality that is the future. They want to show that differences are a blessing and not a problem.

As was the case with Åkerman and her United Invitations concept, the students seemed fascinated by the idea of Guds Hus, and all of their questions were readily answered by the inspiring, idealistic, charismatic and energetic Dalbäck, Olwan and Herczfeld.

Stockholm, Sweden! Part I

Believe it or not, we only have one month left of our program, and yet we feel we're just getting started and have so much more left to do. In the past two weeks we have been to Stockholm, Sweden, been stepping up our game at the volunteer programs, been doing some independent travelling outside of school and been to several different outings.

But first things first. Last week we took a quick 4-day trip to Stockholm, Sweden. In that time, we got to explore different aspects of this Scandinavian country.  This will all be unveiled in several blog posts over the next few days. Sightseeing, meeting with political organisations and NGOs (as well as with initiators of various peace-projects) and walking tours in different parts of the city were different ways we used to get to know Stockholm and Swedish society. A Scandinavian welfare state, it shares many similarities with Norway. But as we found out, there are also differences. The most striking one might be the more cosmopolitan feel Stockholm gives off when compared to Oslo. The city is bigger, the streets wider and the shops are more plentiful. The latter in large part not only because of a bigger population and thus a bigger market, but also because Sweden, unlike Norway, is a member of the European Union. With regards to developments the recent years, Sweden has also taken in a higher number of refugees and immigrants from various parts of the world. Exposing the students to this new and diverse Sweden was a central part of our trip.

Off course, we also took advantage of our time here to see the sights, visit the picturesque old town and the impressive Vasa museum, and just have a good’ol time. We were also lucky enough to be joined by some charming family members of one of our students, who had decided to come to Stockholm to explore their Scandinavian heritage. 

NOAS and Norway.

So we just had fall break. A time for the students to take a step back and think about their time here. Just before the fall break we touched on an emotional and ever relevant topic; asylum seekers and their refuge to Norway. We went to visit NOAS; a support system put together to help asylum seekers and refugees get protection in Norway. This involves a lot of solidarity, information, legal aid, food and lodging and not in the very least counselling. We got to hear about the struggles of the journey here, but it was also an important reminder to us that once they've come here, the struggle isn't over. Sure, they get housing and pocket money to scrape by, but the past of these individuals, who all carry their own horrific stories, the acclimatization to a new country, customs, laws, and fight to work and integrate is underappreciated. Not only is the fight to re-establish a new foundation and stabile life from nothing devastatingly hard, but to do so knowing that 2-3-4 years down the line, the possibility of getting rejected is all too real and what you built for yourself isn’t validated or possible. We got a glimpse of the frustration of the process it takes to become a positive reply from the government, in hope of settling a life in a place where bombs don’t drop like rain. Some get their positive replies and off course some negative, and you start thinking "what would I do?". You can't stay, you got denied, so you get no funding, and even if the taboo of being an "illegal" harbours so much negative connotations that you'd think it was synonymous with "contagious". You can't go home. You die. Or maybe you’re lucky and get to live being on the run. According to the Dublin regulation, a European Union law implemented, prohibiting asylum seekers going "country shopping" as they call it. Once a refugee has entered and applied for asylum in either a country in the EU, or a country that also signed this regulation, but being independent from the EU, they get catalogued. They're fingerprinted, photographed, and put in a database. This is to stop them, if denied, jumping from country to country tapping resources till they get the answer they want. So that's out too. So, what do you do next?   A good crash-course in basic human rights reminds us how far we can stray from not viewing these people as... well people. To not view them as this invasive horde of "the others". The "them" versus the "us". But rather see them for what they are, which is human beings who drew wrong ticket and ended up in the middle of a war zone, fighting to get away from home and everything they know, for a hope of normalcy.  

Fall exhibit and democratization of the arts.