World Village Festival, a free gathering for the whole family, will start as an online event this Saturday 29 May at maailmakylassa.fi. The festival is organized by Finnish development NGOs Fingo. The theme of this year’s festival is the future, which will be explored through various different perspectives and through the voices of people joining in from all corners of the world.
– The world is facing enormous challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has undone a lot of the achieved progress. Extreme poverty is on the rise and climate change is getting worse. We can turn the direction – but the time for solutions is now, says Fingo’s Executive Director Juha-Erkki Mäntyniemi.
– Sustainable future and reaching the goals of Agenda 2030 requires concrete action from states, businesses, civil society and individuals. Through World Village Festival we want to bring people together to discuss visions of a sustainable future, because global challenges can only be solved together.
World Village Festival has been organized since 1995, and the festival is strongly rooted in civil society work. As Finland’s largest NGO event, it has always inspired people to take action and make a difference as individuals, members of organizations and as a part of civil society. The festival also offers experiences from different cultures of the world.
– From the perspective of the main organizer, in the current global situation World Village Festival has an even more important role and opportunity to share information about global issues, activate citizen discussion and inspire different people to build a sustainable future. The festival also offers a wide range of concrete opportunities for collaboration that enable us to break down silos, forge new partnerships between different actors in the society and work together towards these shared goals, Mäntyniemi continues.
The full festival programme is available for free for everyone during the festival weekend, 29–30 May, and the following week until 4 June.
The festival is organized by Finnish development NGOs Fingo, which is an umbrella organization for approximately 300 development organizations. The festival’s main partners are Lutheran Church in Helsinki, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, European Commission in Finland, European Parliament Information Office in Finland and Maailman Kuvalehti magazine.
More information
Nelli Korpi, World Village Festival Communications Manager, nelli.korpi@fingo.fi, +358 50 317 6698
Flickr-kuvagalleria (images can be freely used by the media)
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