Heart and commitment: organizing the World Assembly in Malmö

By Enrique Buchichio
ICAE

The ICAE VIII World Assembly will take place from 14-17 June in Malmö, Sweden. From there, an organizing committee is working hard in order to arrange all the details. Mats Ehn is the committee’s coordinator, and recently he visited Montevideo to meet Celita Eccher and all the ICAE Secretary-General team. The organizing committee is formed by the Swedish Adult Education Association (SAEA), RIO and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) with the Swedish National Council of Adult Education (FBR) as the host.
We took the opportunity to chat with Mats about the arrangements for the Assembly and about the folkbildning, the Nordic tradition on popular education which will be one of the Assembly’s main themes.

How are you working in the organizing committee?

We are various members. In the international organizing committee we have Alan Tuckett from England, of course Celita Eccher from Uruguay and also Marcela Hernández is helping a lot with all the documents for the meetings. We also have Sara Longwe, Robbie Guevara, Heribert Hinzen, Sturla Bjerkaker, Gina Ebner (Secretary General of EAEA) and Uwe Gartenschlaeger from DVV International. And from Sweden we have Ingrid Brundin. Besides the Assembly we are also organizing other parallel events, like the EAEA General Assembly, and a national assembly of folkbildning (popular education) organizations; that’s why we also have a national organizing committee. There will be also a Nordic assembly at the same time and there’s a committee working on that too. So we have to take many actions at the same time in order to coordinate all the different activities.

Why is important to travel to Montevideo to have this kind of meeting?

New technologies allow us to communicate in ways that we could never imagine, and usually we meet through Skype. But clearly, this is also very exhausting and it is very much easier to meet face to face to talk things through and take decisions. That is why this is a very good opportunity. This was our only trip, but of course we’ll have more meetings through Skype before the Assembly.

What are the main challenges in organizing an event like this?

Communication is pretty hard, together with all the logistic aspects for the conferences, the locations, spaces. We should also mention the visa-related problems. Translation is also a very big challenge due to organizing as well as financial aspects. In fact, all the financing is a very big challenge since the ICAE has to find resources for some issues, we have to find them for other issues, and you never know in advance how many resources you’ll actually have. So you have to be very flexible during planning. I think perhaps the uncertainty in many aspects is the major challenge.

Could you tell us about the folkbildning and how it will be part of the Assembly?

The folkbildning has roots in social movements as a way to democratic advance in Sweden and other Nordic countries. They were tools in order to build their own knowledge. But also, at an individual level, an opportunity for people to develop their own capacities and skills. For this purposes there is State financing in Sweden, but at the same time with great liberty which I think is what assures the quality of folkbildning in Nordic countries: we have a financial base which allows us to work in an organized way, and at the same time we have real liberty to choose our areas of work. From a State point of view, the reasons for this opportunity is that it is considered a way of contributing in democratic development as well as giving people the chance to empower themselves in fields that are important for their lives.

We have two main structures in folkbildning: the study circles and the folk high schools. I am an educator and I have worked in a folk high school created by organizations from the peace, environment and solidarity movement. Different movements have their own study associations and folk high schools, with the labour movement and different churches among them. The most recent folk high school was formed by Muslim organizations, a growing minority in Sweden, and this is a way for them to shape their integration into society. This way, when new needs arise, is easy for the system to adapt, since is not very rigid. We think that this is a social achievement which is part of the democratic infrastructure.

How many people are involved in this education system?

In the study circles there are some 1,5 million people each year, out of a population of nine million people. In extended courses in folk high schools there are some 25,000.
Since this time the ICAE World Assembly is taking place in Sweden, there is a clear interest in Nordic folkbildning, which is why folkbildning will be one of the four themes for the Assembly. I think the importance of this is how to learn from the Nordic experience in order to face the national and global challenges of our time.

What would you say to people in order to invite them to Malmö?

I believe that the issues that we will be addressing at the Assembly are of global interest for educators, and for all the people working in the field this is a great opportunity. It will be a chance for meeting a lot of people committed by heart in advancing towards necessary changes. We need to build international networks in order to face the problems that we have as humanity. And another thing: you will be coming to Sweden by the time in which it is one of the most beautiful places in the world, when the summer is beginning, we have almost 24 hours of daylight and everything is flowering.