Issue 7 - Open Day – Sunday 6 August
Global Village Opens Its Doors
Arthur Rowland V33
Global Village Youth Festival 2006! After a great start with our explosive opening ceremony more than 4,500 of us have had a brilliant week with inventive and educating workshops. We have been entertained in the evenings with a packed and overlapping night life. We have kept in the know thanks to the media centre with its newspaper and TV and Radio broadcasts. And we have been enjoying Tillyards coffee, and Groovy Movie and the Fairytrade Cafe
Today is the open day and all are welcome to explore this wonderful site and all of its treasure. But the happenings today are not only new to the visitors - there are plenty of new and exciting activities for our dedicated campers who have been enjoying all of the festival already for the past week. If you're looking for somebody to credit this great camp to, look to the Woodcraft Folk, who are organising it on behalf of IFM-SEI.
Why Global Village? Well, it was an idea at the start of the project of a global community, a place where inhabitants of the world could live together without conflict or oppression, without poverty or prejudice.
That's why there are over 50 countries represented here, many outside of Europe, and why one third of the participants attending GV06 are not from the United Kingdom.
"Everybody is willing to participate and co-operate in work and in games, and that brings people closer together" said Heladio Ramirez, a member of the Mexican delegation, "and language, traditions, and politics are not important, they all become one, and that 'one' is Global Village."
Hopefully, the workshops we have been going to have been bearing the themes of the camp in mind, based on the Millennium Development Goals, and Peace and Co-operation. The Child Exploitation area held a meaningful workshop hosting an ex-child soldier, Emmanuel Jal, who now has an international hip-hop career. The Democracy Centre had a few games of Democratic Chess, banishing the usual silence and replacing it with a babble of important debate.
Most of the centres, based on the festival's themes, are found in the John Hendry and Kent Pavilions, along with the Fairytrade cafe and the cinema.
MEST-UP is an area of the site for young people to get answers to issues they may be unsure about, resolve disputes or just discuss their and others' views on subjects such as identity, sexuality, drugs, and gender.
We hope you enjoy yourself today in Kent County Showground's latest and best incarnation. Oh, and if you get lost, there's a map on page 7.