Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Page 6

Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Page 6
6 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”

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