Nordland County Municipality, hello!

A singing Nordland dialect responds so welcomingly and optimistically every time you call the switchboard to Nordland County Municipality. This has been the case in all the years we have worked with the county municipality.

It started in June 2012 when Peacepainting was in its infancy, but still had completed many successful projects at home and abroad. We showed that we had the ability to act in a field that needed to be much more focused on - namely equality.

We were able to inform the county council about our existence and our vision and a growing collaboration was underway.

Strengthening the Roots

The year before, in 2011, Peacepainting received advice from government ministries that we now had to go home and strengthen the local roots both publicly and privately. Until then, between 2007 and 2011, we had received national support for the activities. First from the Church of Norway, and the background for that was that Christianity was equated with the other religions in the school system and faith education that was about Christian values, should be taken care of by the church itself. We who started the Peacepainting idea happened to hear about all this and that the Parliament (Stortinget) had allocated substantial resources to the Church Council. In turn, the Church Council was to distribute project funds for good faith education projects around our entire country. Our motivation for joining this, was a belief that the basic faith education we can give to children and young people is the belief that their own worth is exactly the same as everyone else's.

Method Validated Internationally

We then received support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Culture and Equality with the objective to test the method internationally. This would allow us to test whether the method in working for equality could be applied universally, irrespective of culture and governmental systems. After many years of testing internationally, the method was indeed validated as universal.

Peacepainting and Nordland County Council

Nordland County Council has supported many of our projects financially, for example Peacepainting Center, projects for refugees and street children. We fit under the county council office for industry and the office for culture. Together, the support from these two offices have been important contributing factors to the fact that Peacepainting has received funding from the governmental budget since 2018.

These days, Nordland County Council’s website is out of order after it was subjected to destructive hacking. Sensitive information can go astray and we hope such attacks will become rarer when the world's population experiences real equality. Human reason and understanding are still evolving and must be tested negatively and positively until we indisputably agree on equality between peoples and nations.

Peacepainting Center and Nordland County Council

Peacepainting has strongly felt the need for a place to be head quartered - a heart to conduct activities from. When we signed an option agreement on the plot Guldvikhaugen by the coastal road, things were really getting started. Bindal municipality has supported the idea all along. They allocated funds for an investigation into whether it was realistic to set up a center and whether there was quality and breadth in both the method and the human resources. They concluded that it was a down-to-earth and future-oriented project that to the highest degree sought to fulfill the UN's sustainability goals in parallel with other types of activities. It may seem that our and the next generation must be highly creative and inclusive with each other in order to reach these common goals.

The county municipality's international focus in relation to trade and society, saw potential to focus on children and young people and equality through, for example, Peacepainting. Trade and cooperation across national borders to distant and close areas has always provided opportunities to show respect and fair trade. The many times this has happened in such a way, we have not only exchanged goods and ideas, but also interesting experiences on many levels. Trade is a unique chance to show respect and equality, but it must be looked at in natural way and not taken for granted. This is where activities such as Peacepainting can provide a complementary picture of life and collaboration.

Statements about the collaboration between Peacepainting and the Nordland County Council were very important in addition to our own briefing on the work, when we got access to the state budget. The local roots we have gained are not just about the contact with the County Council and the international work. It is also about the many municipalities on Helgeland and elsewhere in Nordland County. Now that we have an agreement in place with Bodø2024, we will be able to include children and young people in many more municipalities to take part in an international equality movement for, by and with children and young people. We will also visit municipalities in Troms and Finnmark as well other counties in Norway.

We are in a good flow and our goal is for this center to become a signal building at the southern end of the county, just like The Whale can become a signal building at the northern end. Together, we create a common goal regarding the UN's sustainability goals - as Bodø2024 also does. Something will remain and be able to become a resource for the whole of Europe when Bodø has emerged as the European Capital of Culture in 2024. Peacepainting Center can help to fulfill this with its commitment.

Peacepainting’s Presentation at the County Council

In December 2021, we were again at the county council in Nordland and informed about the development and our plans for a future center on Helgeland. (See a video of our last presentation here). We will able to compare ourselves with "The Whale" and apply for a proportionally equal amount as they have received, seen from a total budget.

We are also in the process of getting the private business community on the funding team for Peacepainting Center. This was the advice we received some years ago from the central politicians: get local roots in both the public and private business sector. It has taken time, but if something is to become strong, a solid foundation must be built. We have done this through the many projects every year since 2007 and until now and by the fact that we now have a competent knowledge and experience board in both the Peacepainting Foundation and Peacepainting Center AS.