Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Page 6

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2010
Article | Sowing The Seeds Of Love
We hear lots of things about Icelanders being generally uninterested in volunteering for
things. What do you readers think - is this true?
They creep so subtly under the radar that it’s
easy to miss them. Like invisible elves bustling
about, fixing up properties and green spaces
in your rural villages, building and maintain-
ing huts and trails in your national parks, or-
ganising cultural projects in your community
spaces, building playgrounds in your housing
estates, and picking up litter on your beaches.
Each division spends two weeks at a time on
duty, living together and working long days, in
all sorts of weather and on various missions.
So who are these people? Truth is they aren’t
fairies, most of them aren't Icelandic, and
what’s more they do it all for free.
INTROdUCING: SEEdS
Who are we talking about? Time to introduce
SEEDS, a non-profit organisation headed by Co-
lumbian Oscar-Mauricio Uscategui, which was set
up in 2005 in order to host foreign volunteers on
social and environmental projects in Iceland, and
also organise a place for Icelanders in similar proj-
ects broad.
But why do people come from all over the world
to work on a range of social and environmental proj-
ects in Iceland? There’s no financial incentive, in
fact volunteers have to pay a small fee to cover the
cost of the projects they work on.
“Some of our volunteers come because they
always had a dream to visit Iceland, some come to
meet others and just try something new, others be-
cause they’re extremely concerned about the global
environment and Iceland’s place in it,” SEEDS
coordinator Anna Lúðvíksdóttir tells me. The or-
ganisation has hosted over 2.000 volunteers since
it started workcamps in 2006, 800 of those volun-
teers in 2010 alone. The number of workcamps and
projects the organisation runs has grown from thir-
teen to eighty in just four years.
Proof that getting your hands dirty, seeing the
country and living with total strangers for two
weeks has growing appeal.
ICELANd'S SILENT ARMy
At the organisation’s recent conference on the en-
vironment, guest of honour and award winning
journalist-slash-environmentalist Ómar Ragnars-
son paid homage to the organisation for it's vital
grassroots environmental work, referring to them
as "Iceland’s silent army" and as "warriors for the
cause". Award winning writer and director Andri
Snær Magnason who also spoke at the conference
said "I only heard about SEEDS when they con-
tacted me about the conference. I'm amazed at the
work that’s been going on all this time under the
radar.”
While SEEDS main focus is on hosting inter-
national volunteers and sending young Iceland-
ers abroad, the organisation intends to broaden its
scope and look more towards ways of encouraging
young Icelanders to volunteer within their own
communities.
One way in which they are tackling this is by
bringing local youths together with international
volunteers, so they can judge for themselves the
benefits that volunteering can bring. “Some of our
projects, particularly those linked with youth cen-
tres, require volunteers to come and mix with local
Icelanders. To begin with, there can be resistance
on the part of local kids and teenagers, they wonder
what these people are doing here and it takes time
to open up, but the walls always come down in the
end.” Anna goes on to say that for Icelanders living
in small or isolated communities in particular, this
is often an amazing experience.
INTERNING CAN pAy OFF!
Another area of potential interest to Icelanders are
the internships that the organisation provides for
young people. SEEDS provides intern opportunities
both in their office and in the field for up to a year,
which, according to Anna, have helped many young
people develop valuable organisational, administra-
tive and leadership skills. "We are constantly host-
ing people in our office as interns, giving them
the opportunity to learn new skills. We have links
with many universities abroad, and working with
SEEDScan be a great way to find out what you are
really interested in and widen your horizons.” She
adds that “volunteering can offer people a chance
to develop skills and capacities that can lead back
into full time employment, as well as providing a
gateway into a new sector of employment".
Another major focus, and challenge, is encour-
aging local communities to maintain the projects
which SEEDS starts in their areas. "Hosts in our
communities engage completely with our volun-
teers and it always causes excitement and curiosity
in the communities where we work. But as soon as
our workcamp is finished, many projects are not
kept up.”
CHANGE CAN HAppEN
While the reality of Icelanders adopting the cul-
ture of volunteerism on a wider level will take time
to achieve, SEEDS has noticed micro level shifts
among smaller communities. “We’re beginning
to have some success with our coastal projects in
that communities are beginning to see that it’s in
their best interests to keep their beaches clean af-
ter realising the huge difference our projects have
made. We’ve also had really positive response to our
environmental education programmes, such as re-
cycling programmes, with young children".
Andri Snær sums it up in a story told at the SEEDS
conference last week. "As a child playing on the
beach I didn’t see the plastics, the old computers,
furniture as rubbish. It was my playground and was
just what a beach looked like. I wasn't educated. In
fact if someone had come and cleaned away all my
playthings I would've been really pissed off. But
when I saw a beach without all these washed-up
plastics, I realised that’s what it should look like."
Change might happen slowly, but it still happens.
SEEdS Of Revolution
Iceland’s Secret Army of Volunteers
Words
Eimear Fitzgerald
photo
SEEDS
The concepts of liberty and justice are
somewhat contradictory. If I am com-
pletely free, I should not have to jus-
tify myself to any tribunal, or suffer any
consequences for any harm I may have inf licted
on others. Anyone who gets in my way deserves
whatever punishment I dole out.
The idea of justice dampens our most libertar-
ian impulses and forces those of us who choose
to live in society to conform our behaviour in a
manner that punishes us for ignoring the rights
of others.
The extreme form of libertarianism adopted
by Davíð Oddsson and his followers predictably
resulted in the gross inequities we can all now
observe in Icelandic society. Unfortunately, how-
ever, the results of their extremist views continue
to cast a pall over our world.
The system used by the Iceland’s ruling caste
to launder their ill-begotten gains is simple to
describe: The members of the financial class
created a dizzying multitude of limited liability
entities which obtained vast loans from the banks
controlled by their owners. The owners paid
themselves high salaries, large bonuses, and un-
justified dividends. When the pretence of sound
business practices wore thin, they funnelled the
companies’ remaining assets into newly-created
shell companies, had the original companies de-
clare bankruptcy, then convinced the banks (still
operated by their co-conspirators) to write-off per-
sonal guarantees and security interests on prop-
erty acquired by the original companies. Result:
the rich got richer, the banks lost their invest-
ments, and the government (i.e. the rest of us)
got stuck with the bill.
Here’s how it works for ordinary citizens: Af-
ter taking out a 40 million króna mortgage loan
for an overpriced residence at the peak of the real
estate market, the borrower gets laid off. The
bank forecloses on the property, sells it for a frac-
tion of the amount loaned, and obtains a personal
judgment against the borrower. Even if the bor-
rower declares bankruptcy, she is still personally
liable for the remaining debt until the end of her
days. So, she has no job, no residence, a judgment
against her that she can never pay off, but the
bank will be able to maintain the judgment on
its books as an asset. Her only escape from a life
of indentured servitude is a one-way ticket out of
Iceland—which loses all of its investment in her
(education, healthcare, etc).
Practically, it is simply not possible for most of
us to exploit this system. We don’t have lawyers to
draft and file documents, accountants to navigate
regulations, or bankers willing to give us loans
without collateral.
This is not a failure of the laws. They are not be-
ing misinterpreted by the courts or the regula-
tors. This is precisely how the laws enacted by our
representatives are intended to function.
This is, however, a failure of justice.
The freedom of the moneyed class to move capi-
tal from one pocket to another, regardless of the
harm to the nation as a whole, is deemed under
our laws to be more important than the provision
of life’s necessities to the rest of us.
In a civilised country, one might expect the
government to recognise that the needs of the
many outweigh the desires of the few, but this
has not been the case in Iceland. The laws them-
selves are designed to funnel a higher and higher
percentage of the nation’s wealth to a select few,
while doing little to guarantee a minimal level of
economic security for those in greatest need.
An average worker with an underwater mort-
gage has no freedom, no future. He’s toiling like
Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill, watch-
ing it go down the other side, then starting all
over again the next day, worrying how he’s going
to make it to his next payday.
What is most galling is that the elite, for
whom the laws are written and for whom lives are
ruined, are utterly clueless. They’re not striving
to improve themselves or the world around them.
They’re preoccupied with increasing the size of
their pots of gold, impressing one another with
their possessions and seeking new thrills. How
any rational being could ever believe this state of
affairs ought to represent the ultimate goal of our
society is beyond me.
John Locke wrote, “The end of law is not to abolish
or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.
For in all the states of created beings capable of
law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”
Modern Iceland is not the “zero-government”
libertarian state that Milton Friedman and his
followers idolized, but something more sinister.
There are laws, but they are specifically intended
to rob the majority of citizens of their liberty.
Opinion | Íris Erlingsdóttir
Liberty And Justice For All
“Some of our volunteers come because they always had a dream to visit Iceland,
some come to meet others and just try something new, others because they’re
extremely concerned about the global environment and Iceland’s place in it”