A few times per year Save the Children Youth Sweden (StCY) arranges activities for its youth leaders all around Sweden, and coincidentally their multi-weekend was arranged in Älvsjö, south of Stockholm, during October 9-11.
Karin Johansson, SweZam and Sanne Hultgren, Save the Children Youth
Friday 9th of October
The multi-weekend is a working weekend, where different groups in the association meet to work and educate themselves. In addition, the reason is to meet with other engaged young people, to be inspired and have fun together.
We were invited to join the first evening of the gathering. We: Bruce, Linda, Don, Ylva, Karin and Rolf. The scout cabin in Långsjö Park was quite cold and empty, so we were served cups of tea to get some warmth in us, while Sanne Hultgren (vice chairperson of StCY) told us the background of StCY and the intentions of multi-weekends, furthermore we also chatted about other things.
Linda and Karin are discussing on the multi-weekend.
The objective of StCY is to achieve a sustainable change in the conditions that hinder the child from getting his or her rights respected and protected.
They work to:
• make children and youth aware of their rights
• make children and youth strengthened as individuals
• influence and improve the conditions of children and youth
An interesting comment from the Zambian team, I think, was something similar to ”But why do you even focus on Swedish children? You have all this free education, teachers are not allowed to punish you, and so on.” That led to an interesting discussion, as Swedish children might have a relatively good economic and materialistic standard, while the mental health of Swedish children is in a somewhat poor state.
Bruce and Don are surprised, in a bad respectively a good way, by the vegetarian food served at the weekend. (Don is a vegetarian!)
As a principle, for the future of our world, all the meetings arranged by StCY central try to serve nice vegan food. That is quite a statement and was very much appreciated by us!
Eventually more youth arrived, and the team was able to talk to among others, the international committee (?) who are interested in starting a project together with an organisation abroad. We will see if that can lead to something.
At 20:30 Rolf drove the Zambian team to Uppsala, for a week-end in Gothenburg, and Ylva and myself tried catching a bus – which actually was cancelled without any notification. It is possible even in Sweden…
Text: Karin Johansson, SweZam board