Last weekend was the final weekend of the Tomorrow’s Take project. We all met in Oslo for the weekend to do lots of filming and decide how the film will look. We interviewed people from a “transition town” in Sagene, from the Blitz house and from the shop Fairtrade Friends. We went around Oslo and did some green graffiti – using a paint made from moss. We also did some guerrilla gardening – plant vegetables, fruit and flowers in any soil we could find around the centre of Oslo. It was really a great weekend, so get ready for a awesome short film about sustainable development in Norway!

On April 26th 40,000 people gathered at Youngstorget to sing the song “Barn av regnbuen” (Children of the rainbow). Breivik, said in court last friday that he hates the Norwegian children song, claiming it is being used by “cultural Marxists” to brainwash the country’s youth into supporting immigration. The song is a Norwegian version of Pete Seeger’s “Rainbow Race”. The man who made the Norwegian version, Lillebjørn Nilsen, led the singing. Everyone from the Peace House went out into the streets to join the singing. We only expected a few hundred people, yet when we arrived we could barely fit into the square. It really shows the power of people each taking a small action, yet it is sad that it has been provoked by such horrific actions.

The annual meeting this year went down in style in Stavanger, with over 70 people attending, including lots of juniors woo! We looked at the recent organisational review and elected loads of cool new people to the committees and board. In my opinion the most exciting thing that happened was the creation of a junior structure in Norway, paving the road for a Norwegian Junior Branch…

Here are Kristina (left) and Marie (right) pushing out the old NJR, Turid. Congratulations to Susanne Schröder and Åsmund Kongsvik who have been elected as members of the junior committee.

The European Junior Branch Meeting (EJBM) is a gathering of young CISVers in Europe who meet to share ideas and plan on how to make Junior Branch bigger and better. I attended EJBM this year to present my booklet on EVS, to tell young CISVers about the great opportunites out there. The booklet is show a few posts before this one.

On the final night the staff promised a big surprise, watch the video to see what they came up with:

EJBM even made it into the news, if you can speak french (or use google translate), check out this link:EJBM in the news!

My best staff experience yet has to be the National Junior Camp (NJC) over Easter. For 5 days 40 junior stayed together doing some of the best activities I have seen. I am so inspired by the creativity and energy of the juniors in CISV Norway, they really are a great bunch.

And of course we had the best staff team ever (including the white ninja):

All the participants gave their all, throwing themselves into the activities, and even pans of water:

Crime stories are very popular over Easter in Norway, so we made our own mystery of the Easter caterpillar. Unfortunately the footage is too gruesome to be put online (or the songs included break copyright law and so it is removed…).

The last Saturday in March at 8:30pm is a very special time across the world. It is when we are asked to turn off everything running on electricity for 1 hour, to raise awareness of global climate change and to show that everyone does and must have a part in changing the world for the better. For more information check out the Earth Hour website.

CISVers marked the occasion by playing our favourite game in the dark; Sardines. Basically like hide-and-seek, but when you find the person hiding you have to join them, and get packed in like sardines in a tin, just like the photo above. The first time we played we made everyone leave their phone in a box, so they couldn’t cheat by using the light on their phones. The second time we played, we hid all the phones, giving everyone extra incentive to hunt in the dark.

When I mention my job to other CISVers they had never heard about it, but after finding out they always say they would like to do something similar, so I decided to create a booklet to inform CISVers about EVS and the possibities it gives us for within CISV and with other like minded organisations. Below are the pages from the booklet, I hope you enjoy it and pass it on!

As the summer gets ever nearer, its time for all the leaders and JC’s going away to camp this year to get training on CISV and how we work with peace education. And of course all the boring (yet as every staff knows – probably the most important) things like forms..wooo!

As an introduction to peace, the leaders thought of things we need for peace. As you can see, the area of sustainable development is a little neglected, but as we are focussing on sustainable development this whole year, hopefully by next year this area will be packed with ideas.

Its always hard to prepare people for camps, as nothing in ‘the real world’ ever compares. However we did get everyone to act as silly as possible, to loosen them up before their camps, where they will spend a lot of time acting like a fool, playing really silly games, which actually have a peace educational message.

The 1st of March 2012 will go down in history as the day the first Norwegian Peace House opened officially! To celebrate the event we had an evening of live music, comedy and speeches from director of the Peace Research Institue Oslo, the CEO of the Norwegian Peace Council and the legendary Berit Ås. The event was a great success and a fantastic time was had by all.

We at CISV Norway are now looking forward to the new opportunities that will arise from being part of the Peace House (cue picture containing obvious metaphor).

“Une croissance illimitée dans un monde limité est une absurdité”
Translation: “Unlimited growth in a limited world is absurd” (it sounds so much better in French)

The “I have a mango” project are putting together a book of articles they have written concerning sustainable development. I always thought I was very conscious about sustainable development, always recycling, walking a lot etc. However I had never really linked sustainable development to my academic background, so I decided to write an article bringing these two areas together, leading to an unsettling conclusion. Below is the start of the article, you can download the whole document here: The end of growth?

When people ask me what I studied at university I always make them promise, before I reveal my darkest secret, that they won’t judge me. When they agree, I admit, “I studied economics”. My faux shame is a joke; I have a true passion for the subject but I do believe there is something in the old saying “there is no truer word than one said in jest”.

You can probably understand that in the current zeitgeist following a global recession, anyone associated with banking or economics is a fair target for abuse. However I would always console myself and others with the fact that my specialisation was development economics, and therefore I am different to those money grabbing corporate types. Although I don’t follow the neoclassical mantra that development is synonymous with growth, I do believe that, as Amartyr Sen concisely notes, “economic growth is one aspect of the process of economic development”. Leaving aside the debate about the appropriate measures of development, basically as a development economist I was interested not in profit but in helping countries grow economically. It certainly seemed like a noble goal.