Baltic Sea Info Tour/Evaluation

Interim Evaluation in St. Petersburg

positive impressions

• SPb: actions seemed to be quite successful + we had at least some successes
• nice company + getting to know activists
• Hki: schedule was clear and worked a kind of well
• SPb: presentation of nuclear waste was good, also the presentations about Belarus and the new Leningrad NPP
• Hki: connection to urgent issue (vote in the parliament) helped to reach many people and to cooperate with many local groups
• SPb: there was a nice group of people, even if it was not too many, there were more than I ecpected
• SPb: action was good and we filled our time with good activities
• I like how things have been going. Of course, we have had to deal with unexpected things and slighty change some plans, but it's normal.
• I like the people, they really know what they're doing and the atmosphere has been good so far.

negative impressions

• SPb: not really contact to Russian people + not really possibilities for networking
• hard to coordinate in SPb
• not so many participants, or just for a short time on the tour
• SPb: schedule was not clear as well as places were not clear
• SPb: abnormally hot weather!
• Visa difficulties
• SPb: exact number of people joining was not clear until the very beginning of the infotour stop
• SPb: it became much more informal when it turned out that there wouldn't be too many foreigners joining the stop
• only a few journalists showed up at the press conference
• materials in English wasn't too helpful in Russia, because people here do hardly understand it...
• SPb: connection to the immediate threat of something was missing (would have helped to mobilize more people)
• SPb: the problem is that there are not so many anti-nuclear activists; and the few NGOs critisizing nuclear power work on other fields or with other methods
• SPb: language barrier
• SPb: not many new contacts made for the international network
• SPb: schedule should have been discussed and clarified at the beginning, but people didn't take time for that
• SPb: buying vegan food was difficult and much more difficult to get gluten free food
• not enough participants for the infotour in general; local activists joining the local stops couldn't get involved more in joining the infotour
• individual promotion of the infotour wasn't done by most of the people involved in the infotour
• SPb: working days dates were bad (for local activists to join)
• hardly any support for organizational tasks during the tour in Loviisa and Hki (reports, media release, financial stuff) – at the same time one person had to answer all email requests for the tour and to do other organizational tasks that only he could do -> too much work for one person! (additionally some people pushed with expectations about doing more stuff that not necessarily needed to be done by this one person)
• networking meetings were not very effective by now
• Helsinki: I was surprised in Tuska festival when I found out that Helsinki stop organizers haven't spoken about our info place with the festival organizers. I would have spoken straight to them and asked for a place for the info stand inside the festival territory. That's my personal opinion because I've worked with event/ festival organization and know that it's a better way. Organizers are responsible for many things, they're usually stressed so... the don't like unexpected surprises.
• Riga: The main problem was that I'm the only one who is organizing Riga stop and I'm responsible for everything: accomodation, schedule, food, permissions, etc. Promotion - I didn't see special problems. I use Internet to promote something so I didn't do something unusual.

improving ideas

• common places to stay, sleep and/or meet
• more promotion for the tour
• better information about the schedule
• have time for exploring the city and for yourself
• visa issues should be prepared better
• more people should join
• experts to be announced for the press conference make more impression and would get journalists more interested (e.g. economy expert, because media is more interested in those money issues)
• more promotion also in Russian language
• camp outside St. Petersburg near to Leningrad NPP and learn from the experience of the SPb stop
• SPb: there should be a real networking gathering with Russian activists joining it
• make really clear the food situation and other questions for the preparation of a infotour stop
• more help with tasks during the tour by the participants:
  • writing short reports immediately about certain activities
  • putting reports and images to the website
  • writing press releases, flyer text or articles for further usage
  • help with organizing the receipts
  • copying images of the infotour to a central computer for documentation
  • searching for media coverage and put results to the website
  • taking over responsibility for gathering information on certain nuclear facilities around the Baltic Sea for the brochure
• more communication between participants/organizers.
• in future, maybe we could send main topics and issues to each person before Skype conference so everyone can prepare answers. Also conferences could be smaller - not more than 5 ppl.
• face-to-face communication is very important: preparation meetings, other events where we can meet each other.