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Description
DOTS Foundation for an Open Society is an NGO that works to strengthen participatory democracy in Latvia, promotes democratic culture of conversations, incites people''s interest and involvement in societal and political processes, and creates an inclusive environment for conversations, discussions and intellectual curiosity. DOTS is the founder and co-organizer of the open-air LAMPA Conversation festival - democracy festival accessible to everyone free of charge and organized since 2015. ACF support to LAMPA festival will contribute towards the goals of the Festival: strengthen democracy and democratic conversation culture in Latvia, foster civic engagement, and encourage a desire for lifelong learning in an ever-changing world. Democracy is fragile – easily lost, easily damaged. It is dependent not only on the institutions designed to uphold, it but also on everyday communication, decision-making culture and interactions among citizens and decision-makers. We must continuously invest our resources in nourishing democracy and create spaces and platforms where people can get together, talk to each other, listen, get inspired, exchange opinions, and form a single national conversation that would allow democratic debate culture to become LAMPA festival appeals to every inhabitant of Latvia, disregarding his/her ethnicity, social status, age, or citizenship.
Direct beneficiaries are:
1) Everyone involved in co-creating and organizing festival’s program: over 250 event organizers –NGOS, academia, media, embassies, international org., and many others. Also the speakers taking part at festival – around 900 people.
2)Attendees of the LAMPA (around 20 000), who will have access to high quality relevant information on topical issues for Latvia, Europe and the world. More education and quality information guarantees more resilience to fake news and any kind of manipulation
3)Everyone will be able to access live stream and later on the digital archive of the festival.