Quarantine in Finland

I returned to Finland after 10 months doing my ESC – project in Skopje, Macedonia. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Finland has listed countries which are in the red zone – meaning when you return, you need to stay in home quarantine for two weeks. And Macedonia was one of these countries. The quarantine was without supervision, so no one came to check am I at home.

And so, I stayed inside with my friend who agreed to spend the time with me. The first five days just passed by. There was a lot of time to catch up with things, ten months is a long time to be abroad after all. We were killing time by listening to music, watching movies and documentaries, reading books, cooking and eating, exercising... Basically whatever interesting you can come up with. Also going outside to take walks was not forbidden so sometimes when the walls of the apartment felt too much there still was an opportunity to go out and get some fresh air.

Texting and speaking on the phone with people can take surprisingly much time as well, especially now when they are spread around Europe. Also, my ESC -project is still ongoing which means I got to use some of my time working for my organization online.

After one week passed time started to slow down and of course, the urge to do something else grew bigger. Especially when you are not sick at all, vice versa energic and missing your family and friends. Still understanding the importance of being careful and responsible even though how much it gets boring.

This felt different from the lockdowns we experienced in Macedonia, when in the spring we had to stay inside in our flat for 2-4 days usually during weekends. That was strange because everyone had to do it and the outside world looked kind of apocalyptic. But also, you know that everything around you is closed and no-one else gets to do anything either.

Here it feels different, the time has passed from the beginning of the outbreak and there has been time to internalize the situation more. From the window, we can see how other people get to go and continue their everyday stuff. It is only us who are in quarantine, not everybody.

Overall, I cannot say that the quarantine was absolutely horrible, but I wouldn’t want to experience the same again. But also, after two weeks it feels super to finally get out and go back to society. So better stay healthy and safe not to experience the same again.

The situation in Finland is tolerable for now, masks are suggested to wear in public transport and crowded places, but not actual restrictions have been set for that yet. Coming back feels almost normal, you can see people’s faces in the streets, bars and restaurants are open. We have been joking in Macedonia with another Finnish volunteer that it is not so weird for us to implement social distancing because we are from Finland and we keep the distance from strangers anyways.

Kirsi Suomi

1What are the Balkan Regional

Forum and Balkan Green Deal?

The Balkan Regional Forum was a 3 day online event and an open platform for organizations, individuals, initiatives and institutions from the Balkan countries to jointly discuss and create the Balkan Green and Just Recovery Plan, as well as to inspire future plans and contours regarding the Balkan Green Deal. The Forum included informal learning and participants’ knowledge and experience exchange while gathering visions and concrete steps and actions to implement the vision of the Just Recovery Plan and the creation of the Balkan Green Deal contours.

The Balkan Green Deal is a document that consists of collectively created visions for a socially just and environmentally sound future with concrete steps that need to be taken to make that future a reality. This includes bold and specific policy recommendations based on principles of justice and equity for all, and demands for policymakers to not only do what is politically possible, but what is desperately needed. Balkan Green Deal to reflect the collective vision of 2030 we build together in the process, the joint dreams of a world of abundances for the many on a livable planet.

The Balkan Green and Just Recovery Plan is a pathway on how to achieve the Balkan Green Deal vision for 2030. 2 What are the purposes of the

Balkan Regional Forum and Balkan Green Deal?

The creation of the Balkan Green and Just Recovery Plan and the Balkan Green Deal is of immense importance to catch this momentum of uprising and resisting the interwoven crises of today and to shift course towards a better world for everyone. The purpose is to create a better and bolder framework and a plan that will help our economies and societies build preparedness and resilience for all of the national and global challenges that we are currently facing and are going to face in this transitioning period

More importantly, this is the moment to unite our struggles and strengthen our voices as social movements, groups, initiatives, unions, organizations, policymakers, scholars, academics, care workers, educators, activists, and citizens. This is the moment to strategically work together towards a joint vision, in each and every area of influence we might have, and transform the current unjust system into one that is based on love, solidarity, and a deep care and thrives on peoples’ liberation and celebration of diversity in harmony with nature.

3How will you achieve your

goals? What are your plans and upcoming events?

At the moment, together with the Balkan coalition and different groups, we are in the process of creating, reviewing and contributing to the Balkan Green and Just Recovery Principles and the Balkan Green Deal live documents. During the “Balkan Regional Forum”, we have created a timeline of activities and joint campaigns, where we are connecting our future actions, some of which are: national youth gatherings for creating the national Green Deal, Intersectionality trainings, collective visioning on the road - gatherings with local communities throughout Macedonia and series of meet ups with the Coalition of the Future which is a group that works on the creation of the national Green Deal since the beginning of this year.

In the next steps we are creating a digital space for collecting people’s visions and a place where citizens can write about the problems in their communities and solutions, i.e. a digital participatory platform which will be named “Zelenglas” or Green voice.

The main purpose of the platform is to encourage visitors to share their visions for the future of their community, region, country, and beyond and be part of the change. By creating this virtual place, we want to gather inputs from various groups that will help us contribute to the national and Balkan Green New Deal and Just Recovery Plan. The inputs will be gathered in a form of different questionnaires conducted with a methodology for collecting visions and intersectional approach. The main aim is to collectively work and build solutions that will help decide for our communities and the voices of everyone to be heard.

4Why do you need to do it? Environmental and social injustices affect all of us. But they disproportionately affect the marginalized communities, the ones that have been deliberately silenced and are excluded from political decision-making, cut out of discussions about what the future of our societies would look like So, the creation of a Green Deal will push for a just system change with a built-in platform across regions bringing young people together with young people from underrepresented communities into multileveled decision-making. With this we will jointly create and build strong, collective visions for a socially just and ecologically sound future.

5Who are the participants of the

Balkan Regional Forum? What have you done by now?

Different groups of people coming from all over the Balkans and beyond. to create a platform where decision makers, students, journalists, activists, academics and teachers could discuss and create a joint vision for a just future.

We have started drafting the concept for the Balkan Green and Just Recovery Plan together with SEENET (South East Europe Network for Energy and Transport) and we invite all social justice movements, initiatives and organizations from across the Balkans to share the specific policy recommendations informed by their lived experiences and voices of the communities they work in, with and represent.

6How can people contribute to

them?

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the collective visioning including young people and youth representatives from NGOs, groups, initiatives and people from lower capacity groups such as trade unions, feminist groups, other environmental and social justice groups, and student movements and people from marginalized communities. We need to have everyone on board and include as much input as possible so please take time to go over the live documents and contribute by commenting with your vision, opinion and thoughts, following the links for: the Balkan Green Deal and the Principles for Green and Just Recovery. For anyone that wants to actively participate in this creation process, they should write to us at yfoemacedonia@gmail.com.

You can join via the FB group or email at: balkancoalition@gmail. com, where we will continue working on both documents; the Principles for Balkan Green and Just recovery

situation and the draft Balkan Green Deal.

7What are your expectations about

2030?

The expectations about 2030 should not be only about how we all individually see it but rather how we collectively plan it so it is as much as inclusive as it must be. Even though recent trends about our future are negative, and the current reality might be grim, we need to remain determined to bring about a system transformation, for a just, intersectional and equitablefuture. We need a Balkan Green Deal and a Balkan Green and Just Recovery Plan that put people and the planet first and set out radical demands for building back better from the interlinked crises we are facing now.

Thank you for the interview to Sofija, Ena and Marija from Young Friends Of Earth Macedonia.

Dogukan Sever