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Home > Event-related > European SF > ESF 2008 Malmö [ en ] Post-ESF report: ANNEX on Accommodation(Date: 3 November 2008)
Copies of the emails exchanged between Babels and the Nordic Organising Committee (NOC) of the Malmö ESF. Esf08AccommodationReportAppendix1Monday 15 Sept. Babels Letter to the NOC Dear friends, The situation is desperate and you seem to have singularly failed in your promise to organize and provide solidarity accommodation for the ESF volunteers. Today, Monday 15th, we still do not know where more than 100 volunteers will sleep starting *tomorrow*. What are we supposed to tell people who have agreed to come to work for free for the forum and have nowhere to sleep? To sleep in the street? The NOC had agreed on a budget for Babels several months ago. Babels has been very diligently seeking the cheapest ways of bringing nearly 500 interpreters to the ESF, to interpret into 18 different languages in over 200 seminars. While Babels has been making systematic efforts to keep costs well below the agreed budget, the Finance Group of the NOC has devised ridiculous schemes to save one cent here, one cent there, without looking for long-term solutions. The result is that people are forced to sleep 10 in a room, sometimes on the floor, without mattresses or without covers, and many have to change accommodation (if they are lucky to have one) every two days. Interpreters require a calm space to prepare for their very demanding work during the forum. (Try interpreting for 30 minutes and you will understand why it is not possible to sleep in crowded places.) If no LONG-TERM solution to the accommodation is found BY TOMORROW MORNING 9am, we will be obliged to tell volunteers who are coming While the NOC seems to worry about details and to try to save money AT ANY COST, treating its employees and forum volunteers as slaves, ESF employees and unpaid volunteers working in Malmö are spending sleepless nights trying to find solutions to a problem caused by lack of leadership among the NOC. If you do want interpretation at the ESF, we need you to keep your promises! Another World Is Possible In solidarity, Esf08AccommodationReportAppendix216 September. NOC response to Babels letter. We are so sorry for the situation which has evolved. It is difficult for all of us. Now we have the choice to work together for the best solution, or work against each other. The decision of giving all interpreters solidarity accomodation were taken by the coordination group when we thought that we were going to have 1000 solidarity accommodations. Half of them would be reserved for he 500 interpreters. Today we have a situation where we don’t have these numbers. This is the problem we have to solve. The responsables of accommodation have been working very hard to find solutions to this situation. Their solution is not optimal, but it is the best we can do right now. For the people coming the next couple of days we have 15 more beds in solidarity accomondations. Confirmed today! The scout accomondation 10 beds. For the other interpreters there is right now (Monday 11.10 PM) no other solutions than good mass accommodation. No tents or sports hall, but in small rooms with maximum 18 people. We are doing everything we can for finding more accomondations. We have assigned more volonteers for calling and arranging solidarity accommodations and members from the board will try to come up with new In the meentime we ask Babels to – work out a list of priorities. Who needs the best beds and the small rooms the most?
So don´t tell people that they don’t have anywhere to sleep and that they have to go home, even though the facilities are not desired standard. We are doing everything we can for working out a solution - we hope that you will work with us. The board of NOC. Esf08AccommodationReportAppendix3NOC letter after the NOC-Babels meeting Proposal for agreement: Before being responsible for the budget of Babels, the finance group want to see a budgetproposal for what changes you want to make. You will have information of what has been spent of your budget as soon as possible. But please try to make a suggestion in the meantime, ie how much of not used travel expenses can you use for accommodation. Since we are finding solidarity accommodation every hour, we do wish to limit the amount which can be used for accommodation. After this have been clarified with the finance group you will be responsible for booking accommodation as long as
You should also try to
Please understand that the reason for what you feel is a lack of trust is based on the fact that we constantly get reports about overbooking of food, rooms etc etc. That cannot be how we handle our scare resources. With hope of an proposal we all can agree upon and live with. Esf08AccommodationReportAppendix4To NOC Response to the NOC proposal
You have wasted our time, we do not wish to continue with these fake negotiations, and your lack of leadership has made it impossible for us to begin planning the work for interpreters. Either you accept our proposal as formulated to Lina today, or we will tell interpreters to go home IMMEDIATELY. We will also start informing seminar organizers that we have been forced to CANCEL INTERPRETATION due to your negligence. Seminar organizers will receive full communication of our correspondence on the issue of accommodation. You are responsible for this situation. Our proposal:
You have 30 minutes to reply. That is generous, since we have been waiting for a realistic and honest response from you since last night and every hour waiting for your reaction means interpreters are waiting In case this proposal was not clear, we expect from you either YES or NO. You have left us no other option. Please remember: Another World Is Possible Babels coordination team |
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