During the meeting, participants discussed how to strengthen the Latvian identity and sense of belonging to Latvia and European cultural space, how to instil a culture of civic engagement and patriotism among youth and ways of reinvigorating population’s collective memory. To promote understanding and critical thinking, as well as provoking thoughts on value of solidarity in everyday life and building of strong and united Latvian nation, discussion with pupils particularly focused on various dimensions of solidarity and democracy.
Participants offered various suggestions on how to make Latvia a modern, sustainable Northern European country with population that has strong sense of belonging. For instance, it was suggested that we should celebrate democracy more through various festivals, embrace our achievements and success stories more actively and widely, promote our culture and heritage internationally, use popular culture to speak about our history, have more dialogue on various topics and regular series of public conversations with communities in the regions. These activities would foster public involvement in decision-making process and solving of significant social issues, promote the use of term ‘fellow countrymen’ and help get rid of ‘aliens’ as a term.
Solidarity is one of the priorities of Egils Levits’ presidency. Series of solidarity public conversations launched today, therefore, aims to expand the interpretation and understanding of the meaning of definition and scope of solidarity provided in the Preamble of Satversme. Discussions also focus on how to implement solidarity in legislation, policies and society. Series of solidarity public conversations will also address other dimensions of solidarity such as reduction of social inequality, environmental solidarity, intergenerational solidarity and inclusive society and will continue into 2020.
