Good morning,
I would like to start giving thanks to the people who were helping us a lot during the social forum and whose faces we know because it is possible that there were some more but we simply never got to see them. Thank you Sophie Sermage, thank you Susanne Lund! Both of them are still helping us very intensively in Malmo now in this moment.
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I am sorry if I am going to repeat things that some of you know but as it was again the case in Malmo that we have been described in the official ESF newspaper as “hired (which means paid) interpreters” and our name was mentioned during many meetings as the source of financial problems I am forced to repeat that we ARE ALL VOLUNTEERS. In some cases we start working already six months before the beginning of the forum and continue working during the whole forum with the other interpreters FOR FREE. We are activists who want everyone’s voice to be heard- not just the usual educated elites who understand and speak one of the colonial languages - and to contribute to creating a truly open space, in harmony with the WSF Charter.
We invest our time and also money, as most of us work as freelancers and don’t earn anything while working in the name of Babels. Apart from that we sometimes need to face attacks from our interpreter colleagues who sometimes blame us for dumping the market with unpaid work. But we do it anyway.
That’s it just shortly about us.
Back to Malmo and I want to underline that it is not our intention to insult anyone, making anyone upset, as has been mentioned here (An_ette Nilsson was mentioning in her assessment speech ten minutes before it was my turn that „the organizers were upset after Babel s declaration at the Assembly of social movements) , or create any conflict. There have been too many already - and we have always tried to avoid them if possible.
Why Babels from the economic point of view?
Every time I was mentioning a number I put up an A4 sheet of paper with this number above my head - not only because of the interpreters J who got my almost complete speech beforehand, but because I though it would be more effective and everybody would understand itJ
Babels in Malmö cost 576.000 EUR less than if you’d had to pay interpreters’ fees. AT LEAST, because paid interpreters would not have accepted the travel and housing conditions we accepted.
Renting 120 booths for four days will cost you at a very minimum 720.000 EUR. ALIS cost around 62.000 EUR. That’s around 9% of the cost of commercial equipment, and you get to keep it for other forums.
That does not mean that ALIS or Babels are cheap service providers. They are not, they are part of the movement, but if you want to make them work you have to cooperate and support them... You can’t adopt the capitalist attitude (of an uninvolved consumer) because such an attitude costs even more money!
On the contrary, as it has been shown in Malmo, if we want the things to work it requires intensive communication and cooperation with the corresponding organising committee, full political, logistic and financial support, and also a lead time of 6 months, prior knowledge of logistic issues, and real integration in the decision making process.
That is why we agreed with the NOC in May 2008 on the following conditions.
| PROMISES |
REALITY |
| Budget for interpreters and their needs
1 826 000 SEK/176 000 Euros total budget |
We were continuously accused of being unreliable
We have NEVER been allowed to dispose of it |
| Technology
Will be organized and maintained
by volunteers organized by NOC |
„different reasons“ (has been mentioned few times before it was my turn) - things don t work by themselves just when we look at them
QUOTING THANOS:
There were communications more than a year in advance. We were stressing the importance of having adequate technical support for the system. Specific discussions had been made about the importance of procuring radios of appropriate quality early enough. There were two travels from ALIS-Greece members to Sweden, in order to brief and train technicians and although there was a proposal for someone to come 6 weeks in advance to help with the equipment and the training, there was practically no mobilization of volunteer technicians. And, what is worse, no provision to hire professionals to do the support, once the situation was clear that the people would not suffice. Under these conditions, the technical system was doomed not to work, was it alternative or even a commercial one.
|
| Accommodation
Clean and decent accommodation |
In MANY cases not decent accommodation in rooms for many people. Situation was critical - church, floor, some cases - 2 in one bed, IKEA case, SUSANNE LUND thank you again! |
| Food |
there was enough food for interpreters. It was only difficult for some of them to pick it up as it was very far away from their seminars |
| Snacks |
none |
| Photocopies
PHONES |
thank you very much ABF
Apx. 10 telephone cards which we used up very fast and we couldn t use any fixed phone we could use - we used our own skype accounts |
| Travel cards |
very few - that is also why the travel costs were at the end higher than they could have been |
| Travels costs
1 400 000 SEK/ 135 000 eur for travel costs |
We have spent 800.000 SEK / 77.112 EUR
we have saved 600 000 SEK / 58.126 EUR
We could have spent even less if we had been allowed to buy prepaid tickets on time |
THERE ARE STILL 78 interpreters who have not been reimbursed. That means 22% of the total number of interpreters and 13.471 euros missing.
We have worked under incredible pressure.
The basic problems were: lack of communication and transparency from the side of our NOC contact persons. We have been asking and pleading them weeks, days, hours before the crisis escalated. We have been continuously promised things that were never fulfilled, but the worst thing is that we never knew what was happening. Was it mere incompetence? Intention? Serious problems? We didn t know!
I have just come to announce that we are forced not to trust the promises coming from the NOC although we would really like to. We don’t trust them and the worst thing is that the interpreters who came to Malmo don’t trust us and don’t trust you and don t trust the whole ESF anymore. And not only because 78 of them still haven’t been reimbursed. The name of babels after Malmo has been discredited. Only if we can guarantee the basic working conditions and guarantee that these 78 not reimbursed interpreters get reimbursed as soon as possible we might be able to mobilize still enough volunteer interpreters who would come and support the next ESF here in Istanbul.
And why would we want to do it after this experience?
Because we do believe that a fully open space is not possible without broad linguistic diversity. Restricting communication to a very limited number of “widely spoken” languages is submitting to a world shaped by colonial forces and effectively shuts out people who are not educated enough to speak those languages.
Speaking only in my name. VOLUNTEERING in Malmo as Babels coordinator was a NIGHTMARE and I am not willing to repeat such an experience under similar conditions NEVER EVER AGAIN!
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