Els Groen reported from Strasbourg:
Amale,
Late afternoon 21st September I arrived at Strasbourg. My husband helped me transporting all the books, press packs (PPs), posters and other material for the stand in the foyer. Travelling with us to Strasbourg from the Netherlands was Orhan Galjus, reporter (Radio Patrin) and activist. In Strasbourg we met Pit Becker, painter from Heppenheim in Germany, who designed 8 posters for the stand and helped a lot during the Summit. We also met Sami Mustafa, film maker from Kosovo, so that at least four Members of the Artists' Initiative were present.
In the stand (side event of the Summit) we distributed all 7 available translations of the PP, copies of the cartoon book "Dictators Manuel" in 3 languages, we presented the books and posters and other material, sent by you, and showed on a large screen our website's content: photos, videos, concerts and also information about Board and Members. Even before or shortly after the official start of the Summit on 22 September we were running out of copies of the PP in certain languages and had to make extra copies at the Strasbourg offices of the Council of Europe.
I want to stress here that participants in the Summit highly appreciated to read the PP (4 files about foundation, board, famous Roma and timeline) in their own language. Next time we must do our utmost to have more translations, though the 7 available versions (English, French, German, Romanian, Czech, Italian and Spanish) were already a great achievement. Chapeau for all the artists and scholars who did this translation job!!!
I also want to stress how important it was for participants to see our Main and Daily Board Members and our Honorary Supporters as well as to study the list under the tab "Who is who". Our most precious capital (or should I say: fortune) are our skills, our combined talents and experiences. They prove our quality and capacity, they invite more artists and scholars to join and... local and regional authorities to cooperate with us!
Unfortunately there were serious delays in the beginning of the Summit that forced the organizers to limit the speeches for members of the panel. My 6 minutes were already reduced to 5, when I learned on the spot that I had only 3 minutes to introduce our World Artists Initiative "Khetanes". I believe that I managed to speak for 4 minutes, short, too short, but our constructive message was well understood.
WAIK or "Khetanes" as the Council named us, was received with enthusiasm, as we were not perceived as a network, summarizing problems and obstacles, but as movement that has plans and proposals to actively improve and remedy the situation. Society longs for solutions after all the worrying, if not alarming conferences, seminars and reports.
The number of attending mayors was relatively small, we had a few meetings with some and will contact others by e-mail in the days to come. There were, however, some very interesting networks from Russia, Belgium and Germany (2), with whom we exchanged information and cards. And there were interviews with interesting Press Agencies. The distributed PPs will further promote us. In case media ask for PPs in electronic versions, we will prefer pdf files to Word documents!!!
We made a good start! May the follow-up be better and may the results "just" be great!
Lachi rat!
