Notes from Deniz

Already the second day of the climate bottom meeting is over. The theme of the day was "Worldview, Culture and Spirituality".

Many different exciting talks all over the world..... The one which really impressed me was a project from Sri Lanka. The name of the project is Sarvodaya Movement. They worked with 15,000 traditional villages in Sri lanka and this project has been going on for about 51 years! It was a very inspiring talk by Dr. Vinya S. Ariyaratne. They have nearly a recipe how to work with villages and this may be a very useful thing for Turkey since we have also many many traditional villages. The most inspiring part was the multi-dimensions of the project and how they have put the core values of personal development in the hearth of the whole project. In their project he values and the human development is the starting point and then the social and economical dimensions. May be this the key what make them so successful!

I would also like to mention little bit about the funny parts of the last two days. Everyday, there is a symbolic funeral, "Funeral of the day" which is creative, fun and reflective event.
Yesterday, it was the "Funeral of egoism" and today it was the "Funeral of the American Dream" .

Third day

Today is a day of movement and change! I spent the morning in Christiania in the Climate Bottom meeting. Today's focus was; "The local, the regional and the global". I also had the chance briefly to speak about what is going on in Turkey, the new forming Turkish National Network of Eco-settlements and the EDE trainings we have organized.

By the way, today's funeral was "the funeral of the Global Free Trade" :)))

Then I have moved from village to the town, from cold to warm, from self-organizing structures to very-well organized structure, from circles to lines: the NGO Forum. It is also called KlimaForum in Danish. It is a big place with many stands from different NGOs. It is basically arranged for the different NGOs to present themselves and to reach people. The diversity is striking here too. So many different organizations doing great work to raise awareness about the Climate Change and the social and ecological issues. We have been working to put the GEN's stand up here and now just a break after a hard work. You can see in the picture. The NGO Forum will open at 6 pm with local time, so only an hour to go. The following days the NGO Forum will be open from 10 am to midnight.

There is such a contrast between where I have been before and where I am now!

Love to all and please send out your good wishes

Deniz