Uppsala is the fourth largest city of Sweden. It had 211 000 inhabitants in 2016.
Since 1164, Uppsala has been the ecclesiastical centre of Sweden, being the seat of the Archbishop of the Church of Sweden. Uppsala is home to Scandinavia’s largest cathedral – Uppsala Cathedral.
Founded in 1477, Uppsala University is the oldest centre of higher education in Scandinavia.
Freja Forum in Uppsala was organised by the Swedish Union of Tenants region Aros – Gävle in cooperation with Freja Academy.
The founding organisations and the international participants celebrated 10 years of work to establish a platform which allows European Civil Society Organisations to develop an understanding of equal opportunities and to promote democracy which encourage long term capacity building and peace.
One of the questions in the evaluation system Freja Barometer is if the Freja Forum has contributed to a democratic process in your country. This year only 27 % answered not at all. 73% of the participants was answering “quite much” or “a lot”.
This year, 230 participants were attending Freja Forum. Most of them were female (64 %) according to the Freja Barometer and a majority of the participants were aged 30 and 59. About 9 % were younger than 30 years. Among the workshops were the seminar on Youth situation in Balkan Countries and Turkey most appreciated. Speakers in the seminar were young persons from Western Balkans and Turkey.
Keynote speaker Mrs Wanja Lundby Wedin, President, Olof Palme International Center talked about trust and solidarity between the people of the Western Balkans and between them and the Swedish people.
The great news this year was that Freja Forum was nominated to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for Nobel Peace Prize 2017!