Rain & Alitalia

I was supposed to fly to Krakow tomorrow, but Alitalia decided to go on strike and this means that suddenly I have to fly this afternoon. As if I wasn't already stressed enough this completely made me relax somehow.

Have a bit of a hangover of last night, only got into my bed early morning. Now I packed my stuff and have to leave in five minutes. It is raining very hard here and I first have to go to the centre to pick up rainbow key chains, before I go to Schiphol.

Tonight Gin and Tonic with my sweeties!

Melting Pot

Yesterday evening we closed the study visit of 15 people from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia to Amsterdam. I organised a meet & greet together with the biweekly couscous meal: a meal organised by Chafik, a wonderful muslim guy from Amsterdam. During this meal people have the oppertunity to talk about the Islam, or to talk about nothing at all, whilst being in a safe environment. Many visitors are closeted. Since we wanted to give our guests a good taste of Dutch food as well we had hutspot & couscous. The meal was also visited by international students from an University in Amsterdam: so there was a great mix of people.

A group of Muslim boys was having the dinner in a seperate cafe of the COC building, but soon they came to other cafe and took over the music. The boys played Arabic music and danced beautiful. Soon a lot of people were dancing together, eating couscous and hutspot: it was a very special moment for me.

Until one of the COC volunteers plugged of the music: "This is not a disco evening and the music has to go off." Such a cold bath after such a nice start of the evening. However, we went to the cafe of the boys and continued dancing and talking. The idea was born to organise a disco after each couscous meal. I hope that this evening is the birth of a long future of melting pots!

Fund raising and meetings

This weekend I was in Brussels for the COMEM of the European Youth Forum. Two days of meeting with 120 delegates is not the most exciting thing I have ever done, but it was good to see some people again and to get to know few other people. IGLYO's video on Pride in Activism cheered the meeting up a little bit, with the 2004 hit 'Dragostea din tei', coming from the wonderful Moldova. Brussels is a nice city which I especially enjoyed Sunday afternoon whilst having coffees and lunch with Jasna, Bettina and Maxim.

For the rest I am fund raising, fund raising. We are finishing a huge application to the European Commission, which is a lot of work. It's not my favourite waste of time, though the good thing is that it makes you think of your organisation in another way than you're doing in the every day routine. When I'm not fund raising for IGLYO at the moment I'm assessing funding applications of other organisations to the COC... happy when the first of December has come as by then we'll be finished with everything.

Pre change society

Yesterday afternoon I came back from a training on the Balkan. Together with Joke Swiebel and Maxim Anmeghichean I organised a two day event in Belgrade on Advocacy and Lobbying. It was quite a succes, despite the difficult situation in which many activists on the Balkans find themselves daily! Corrupt governments wanting to access the EU solely for economic reasons, the challenge is to persuade them to improve human rights at the same time... Not an easy task for activists and I have much respect for those people working hard on it!

Belgrade has beautiful views, I discovered on Monday. After the exhausing weekend Joke, Max and I took some time to enjoy ourselves in the city. We had coffee with the wonderful people from Deve, we had a nice walk and a beautiful dinner. After the dinner Max and I walked to a magnificent city part with a tremendous view over the Danube....

Tomorrow I'm going to the Council of Members of the European Youth Forum in Brussels... Two days of meetings. It is the first time that I will attend the CoMem, and I haven't red the statutes yet... Preparation will take some time so I'm happy that I can do that in the train on my way to Brussels...

pfft

I'm back home for a little bit. Have visited Paris for the past 6 days. It was an inspiring but extremely exhausting visit. It was nice seeing gathered 200 LGBT activists working together again, but at the same time many things I did not like.

Such as activists not actively participating in activities, but exploring Paris.
Such as people striving for equality as the cover of an organisation, not minding qualities and competences or even inner equality.
Such as people trying to ruin existing structures without offering constructive alternatives.

It are facets of my work which I have never, and will never, understand. Happy I am to realise that there were more positive aspects of the conference!!!



Now I'm tired, and no time to rest. Am preparing for going to Belgrade on Thursday for a regional training which I'm organising.