A Bubble of Peace

PVP-seminar in Dolni Lozen, Bulgaria, 7-12th November 2006

Love, Peace and Laughter. That was the characteristics of the first week of November, when 28 more or less dedicated SCI-activists from about 20 different countries met in the Red Cross Centre in Dolni Lozen, Bulgaria. The seminar was funded through the European Council’s “All Equal All Different”-campaign and the aim was to discuss, develop and evaluate SCI’s Pacifist Voluntary Project. However, in the future this seminar will be talked about as the week when people ate, lived and dreamed of PVP.

So, what is this PVP-thing about? PVP, or Pacifist Voluntary Project, is a part of the SCI Strategic Plan 2004-2009. The philosophy of SCI workcamps is that it should be a peace promoting experience in itself. With plenty of projects spread throughout the world the peace promoting idea of the workcamps has often been taken for granted. With the Strategic Plan SCI as a movement refocuses on peace issues and peace education. Through introducing specific Pacifist Voluntary Projects, more attention will be paid to workcamps with a specific peace building aim as well as on peace education study parts.

Since that day in June 2003 when I decided to go to a workcamp SCI has had a large role in what have happened in my life. My first workcamp was a travelling workcamp on human rights, and it was full of conflicts. I decided that this can’t possibly be what all camps are about, and that I had to do another workcamp. Now, several camps and an EVS-project later I know what SCI is to me: It is an organisation that gives you the opportunity to learn about yourselves and other cultures through meeting people from all over the world. By getting to know “the others”, we take small steps towards a more peaceful world. In my ideal world, all SCI-camps would be pacifist voluntary projects. Therefore I am convinced that we have to strain towards improving the peace education part of projects as well as increasing the number of projects that do pro-active peace work (campaigns, peace education etc.).

During the PVP-seminar in Bulgaria, we tried to live as we learned. We mixed with the local community by going on an excursion with two Bulgarian guides (I practised my Bulgarian “da” and the nodding “no”) and we danced all night long in the local bar. Our pacifist way of living got treated in public as the seminar was mentioned on a Bulgarian website and we had a very extensive study part on peace issues (well, that was what the seminar was about). Luckily, we did have a session on conflict transformation so that this criterion was covered. Except for that the seminar was conflict less, and hugging and kissing was the most common way of communication. As for the partner organisations’ involvement this is not really applicable. Nevertheless, CVS-Bulgaria was our nice hosting branch and the staff at the Red Cross Centre did all they could to please our wishes, given in poor Bulgarian (limited to only a few useful words, like milk, coffee, thank you and hello).

The cold heaters and the cold cucumber soup were the low points of the week, if you ask the people that were there. On the other hand, there was so much more to the PVP-seminar than a cold Bulgarian November. New friendships were tied and projects were planned for – hopefully they will come true and more will develop. The participants, now all very dedicated SCI-activists, arrived home safely and started planning for how they can convince their branches of the great advantages of PVP:s. Most are still dreaming about PVP, and if you wake any of them up in the middle of the night, I promise that they will be able to tell you what PVP is about.

Maja Permerup
Prepteam member / IAL

pvp_seminar_report_cristina.doc Cristinas PVP-rapport
pvp_seminar_report_final.doc Den officiella slutrapporten från seminariet