Our last destination

Our visit in Latvia started with visiting Parliament which called Latvian Saeima (a Latvian word for a community gathering). During the meeting with Ušakovs, a leader of political party “Harmony centre” who is MP and one of the we had an opportunity to discover an ethnical issues connected with Russian population in Latvia.

Another meeting in Parliament was with leader of one of leading political parties Krišjānis Kariņš and it was like the door was closed for the rest of the world and especially for the paparazzi!!! It was a time of sharing and I felt that this conversation was based on a human level. This means it was not political minded, or that both of us had to be careful what we should or shouldn’t say. What I gained from this meeting was to jump into the life adventures, it’s so easy to just go and let it all happen while if you take sometimes a step aside and not follow the mainstream, amazing things can happen. Of course there will be difficulties and challenges on the road but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t jump! He shared about his background and that he grew up as a Latvian in the United States of America and took the step to come and live in Latvia 10 years ago. He settled up a business and later on he got involved with the politics. In his party there are many different people, with various backgrounds - an actor, a layer, business people etc. People with different visions but the reason why they can work together is the common ground and that they are sharing the same values. It ‘s like Action for Europe, we all have different experiences and backgrounds but we are sharing together Initiatives of Change, the same values and Action for Europe is bringing us together. He shared about his life as a politician and being a person in the society who everybody recognize. He shared that sometimes he even not open up the papers and going to his countryside house to recharge his battery and getting new energy trough spending time with his family. I was so amazed to have this time and that he took his time to spend together with us. Nothing felt strange or was questioned what we were doing. I really felt this is the special thing of Initiatives of Change what you can’t explain but only can experience and that's what happened during this meeting with this famous Latvian politician, a different background but we had something in common and beautiful!


Also Latvian team has arranged a Fact Hunting during our days in Riga and we had a possibility to explore the beauty of old city initially used to be a Livonian village and after that developed by Germans. The tour was leaded by Artjoms who has been participated in F4F course a couple years ago and has been traveled with Action for Change in America last year. Once we suddenly appeared at the last floor of Albert Einstein Center where we found Egils who is part of Latvian IofC team shown us nice views of Riga city.


One of Latvian team members Sandra, who have been involved in F4F visiting course, school program in UK, in activities in Caux and much more, organized for Action For Europe team meeting with a people from youth NGOs to discuss the role of values in informal education. Starting with a question “what do we value the most in your life”, we between all the participants shared our beliefs, challenges and how do we find a balance when we have to work “I find Japanese people very strict about timings and I felt very disappointed when I had to stop my performance because I needed more time. It’s not so important for me to be so punctual, but in some point I have to understand that we have very different cultural backgrounds and I respect it!” said one of the participants. It turned out to be really productive and open dialog, where we brought up various issues connected with the work of NGOs in Latvia and came up with a shared conclusion “there are much more than only one solution in difficult situation and the easiest way should not be excused by comparing with bad examples”.

Meeting in Latvian office of Transparency International has been an opportunity to meet professor Rasma Kārkliņš who is involved in corruption studies for many years and published a few books on this subject.

Another afternoon we had a time with Kaspars Goba – artist, journalist and good man (how some of our friends described him). 12 years ago, just a few years after Latvia gained independence he started to work in a freethinkers magazine “Rigas Laiks” where all his mates “also hated journalism” as he said with a mischievous smile. “Normally reporter goes to a place of event, picks the opinion of those who are most visibly involved and makes the news out of it. I like to live for a while with a situation, problem or event and to find out all it’s realities, to see it from “inside”. Kaspars have been writing and also in recent years making a movies about different social and environmental processes. “government wanted to allow to make a shipping port in very unique place in Riga. I felt sorry for that and then I made a movie to show to everyone the beauty of the place. And it works! The fighting doesn’t work, but showing the reality as it is – it touches and makes people more aware about what’s going on!” Kaspars showed us his movie “Seda” about the countryside village Seda which was built in the middle of last century, in Soviet times for workers who came from Russia, Georgia, Byelorussia, Ukraine etc.

We have been invited by Sandra to her apartment where a lot of people connected with IofC and just friends came together to have make-new-friends-party. Sandra has been involved at IofC for a number of years participating in at Foundation for Freedom course and also has been involved on School Program in Britain and now she work with youth organizations in Latvia and abroad.

Chai, Chai, chai...... it was a year ago that I had real Indian chai......and now Inese Voika offered us a cup of real Indian chai at her place together with her children. After different meetings in Riga and at the Schiphol airport in The Netherlands we had an opportunity to meet each other again but than as an Action for Europe group. Inese has been one of them who supported us this Action for Europe idea from the beginning.

And now Action for Europe became a reality we were sitting, sharing and drinking Indian tea at her place, unbelievable.....

We had a time at her place to discover her amazing house where she was living in with her family, with very funny details, it felt like a museum. We could share about our experiences on Action for Europe and she was sharing her experiences.

Marielle talked about Midsummer’s Night: “In The Netherlands I never celebrated the longest day while my father have been always mentioned it. Now I had the opportunity to discover the Latvian traditions together with my Dutch friends, Christian, Christina and Koosje. On Friday the 22^nd of June we arrived at Ulla's countryside place, an very idyllic place in the forest near the sea. It were actually three spectacular nights with a big bonfire, a lot of Ulla's friends, we were making crowns, jumping over the bonfire, telling stories, swimming in the sea and enjoying each others company. One tradition I did was staying awake the whole night and seeing the sun rise from the sea on the 24^th of June. If you don’t see the sun that morning than the Latvians say you will sleep the whole year. I hope now I have got enough energy to stay awake and have a year full of great challenges and adventures I am ready to jump!”

Photo: Aris Ceders

And now we are almost on the finish line – moving from Miķeļbāka to Liepāja to do our team evaluation and see where to go next from this point!?


Marielle, Ilze and Kostya