International Network Office

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Basic idea

The International Network Office is focusing on nuclear issues, but also open for networking in other political fields. It's supposed to help to connect anti-nuclear activists internationally with others working in the same fields, to support if they are looking for experts or speakers on certain topics or to develop cooperation in common campaigns, projects and actions. A second aim is to provide multilingual outreach material on the topics of anti-nuclear activists and groups to spread the word internationally and to support the local efforts of people fighting nuclear power.


Current setting

We are in the process of establishing the International Network Office. After discussions and preparations for some years, we have now[1] the rooms for this network office in the project house in Döbeln (Saxony - Germany). Greenkids e.V., the grassroots organization which once founded the Nuclear Heritage Network, provides the space and equipment for this networking project.

We have desktops with computers, internet, phone, fax, printers, copy machine, scanner, cabinets and more infrastructure, technics and material as we share the office of the project house. There is also the storage of the international outreach material produced by the Nuclear Heritage Network, collections of contacts, an archive and library with lots of anti-nuclear books, studies, booklets and papers. A database of anti-nuclear groups (contacts) has been started, and another one with experts on certain fields is planned.

As of March 2012, several new anti-nuclear flyers are in process and should be produced until summer: a flyer about the atomic situation in Belarus (Belarusian, English, Russian), one about the Temelín NPP (Czech, English), another one about the Kola NPP (English, Russian) and one about uranium mining in the Czech Republic (Czech, English), a flyer about the atomic situation in Slovenia (English, Slovenian), new language versions of the flyer "Uranium - A Deadly Material" (Czech, French, Norwegian, Swedish) and a Russian version of the Gorleben flyer.


Willing to volunteer?

Now we are looking for people to volunteer with the network office. Activities are the communication with anti-nuclear groups, activists and interested people internationally to connect them with each other, to help them to find speakers for events or experts on certain topics. It's also about coordinating and helping with the production of multilingual outreach material to promote local anti-nuclear topics. Another field is the coordination or preparation of gatherings for networking personally and to stay in touch and exchange with each other.

We aim to have always at least two or three volunteers at once from different countries in the office. Your own networking ideas and activities like traveling to other places and participating in projects there would be fitting quite well to volunteering with the International Network Office.

Volunteers will be provided with accommodation and food during their stay in the project house. Besides that we would like to get resources for project activities organized like funding for gatherings, travel costs, outreach materials etc. However, this could be a possible task for the volunteers to arrange these financial resources for themselves, their projects and other volunteers in future. Donations of supporters are obviously welcome to realize the International Network Office.

You want to volunteer with the International Network Office? - Send an email to office AT nuclear-heritage.net[2]!


Supporters needed

This project is not just provided by a big NGO or financially powerful institution, but created by the ideas of anti-nuclear activists and the will to realize them. We collect resources and aim to gather active people seeing the high capabilities for strengthening the anti-nuclear movements. However, the International Network Office needs the contributions of other activists, groups and organizations. If you are interested to contribute to this project with your knowledge, experiences, donations or by volunteering, please write to office AT nuclear-heritage.net[2].


History

The idea to establish an international networking office against nuclear power and GMOs has its roots in the very first network gathering of the Nuclear Heritage Network in Bure (F) in summer 2008. Since that time we discussed the project with several groups and activists, received much feedbach and developed some ideas for the realization. In each networking gathering it was one of the "future projects" to be discussed, but it took much time before it eventually started.


Local context

The International Network Office is located in the federal state of Saxony, in a county called Middle Saxony. It is part of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), Eastern Germany. In Eastern Germany no power reactors are in operation anymore since the beginning of the 1990ies. However, the local grid operator is subsidiary of the atomic power company RWE.

As of 2011, half of the energy consumption in Middle Saxony (2010: 40%) have been provided by renewable energies produced in the county. This is double the amount of the average production in Germany. The installed capacity rose from 286 MW in 2010 by 18% to 338 MW in 2011. The most important renewable energy source is wind power followed by solar power and hydro power. 2,439 solar facilities have been in operation in Middle Saxony in 2011. Thus, this area is the one with third highest renewable energy production.[3]


Contact

Nuclear Heritage Network
Am Bärental 6
D-04720 Ebersbach OT Mannsdorf
Germany
phone: +49 3431 5894177
mobile: +358 41 7243254
fax: +49 911 30844 77076
email: office AT nuclear-heritage.net[2]


  1. as of 2012
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 For protection against automatical email address robots searching for addresses to send spam to them this email address has been made unreadable for them. To get a correct mail address you have to displace "AT" by the @-symbol.
  3. Döbelner Wochenkurier: Immer mehr Windräder und Solarmodule. EnviaM-Region mit dritthöchster Stromerzeugung aus erneuerbaren Energien bundesweit. May 16, 2012