HKF Twin Club Exchange

 Yalta-Stockholm pioneer project of twinning seafarers' centres

In September 1997, the International Committee on Seafarers' Welfare (ICSW) held a regional seafarers' welfare seminar in the busy Black Sea port of Yalta in the Crimea, Ukraine. Participants were seafarers' club
staff members of the former Soviet Union as well as representatives of national and international seafarers' welfare organizations. Among the ideas brought up during the seminar were two proposals, which proved
to be i interrelated.

Mr Timo Lappalainen, the administrative officer of the ITF Seafarers' Trust, stressed the fact that the seamen's clubs or seafarers' centres of the world ports are different because they operate under different circumstances. He raised the idea of establishing a system of "twin club exchange" to the mutual benefit to the staff members of the centres involved.

At the same seminar, Mr Torbjörn Cruth, executive director of the Swedish Government Seamen's Service, mostly known by its Swedish abbreviation HKF, raised the idea of a sort of scholarship that could be granted to representatives of the seafarers' welfare community.

Such an arrangement would make it possible for seafarers' club staff members of one country to spend some time at a seafarers' centre of another country.

The general idea of both proposals was to facilitate an exchange of experiences of direct use in the home port, preferably between seafarers' centres of different structure and traditions. A spontaneous master-stroke of the HKF was to propose a twin club exchange between the local Yalta International Seafarers' Centre and its own Kaknäs Seamen's Centre in Stockholm.

The seafarers' centres of Stockholm and Yalta have indeed quite different backgrounds, but they have at least one important speciality in common. Both ports bear the stamp of numerous cruise vessels' calls, and both seafarers' centres have adjusted themselves accordingly.

In the autumn of 1998, the HKF celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The celebration callers were humbly advised to support the twin club exchange instead of bringing "birthday gifts". Several shipping companies, maritime organizations and individuals found this a very good idea. Thus, the project received enough funding to cover the first club staff exchange

To estimate the number of seafarers' centres of the world is a matter of definition. Any red light district joint may call itself "seamen's club" etc, but this label doesn't automatically makes it a proper centre in the seafarers' welfare sense of the word. Real seafarers' centres should be safe havens where seafarers of all nationalities can relax for a while without being fleeced of all their money and without being exposed to criminality. Natural equipment and services are a TV set, billiards, table tennis and other sports facilities, a library, a newspaper and periodicals' shelf, a telephone booth for international calls at cost price, a bar or cafeteria for snacks and something to drink, a quiet chapel for religious devotion and a "slop chest" where the seafarers can buy – and mail – postcards as well as souvenirs or essential goods. It is also desirable that such a seafarers' center has access to a suitable vehicle for the transportation of the seafarers.

The club facilities and services of the Nordic seamen's churches are very much appreciated – however, normally they are only available to the Nordic seafarers and their countrymen, like tourists, expatriates and lorrydrivers. In Spain, the second nation to ratify the ILO Seafarers' Welfare Convention, maritime hotels called Casa del Mar, run by the Instituto Social de la Marina – however, they are only available to the Spanish seafarers and fishermen.

In many Japanese, French and Danish ports there are seafarers' hotels – but could they be labeled seafarers' centres if there aren't any club facilities for external seafarers (who don't live there)?

The ILO Seamen's Welfare in Ports Recommendation of 1936 mentions the need for "meeting and recreation rooms (canteens, rooms for games, libraries, etc)" and "healthy recreations, such as sports, excursions, etc". The Seafarers' Welfare Recommendation of 1970 is more precise: "Centres providing meeting and recreation rooms for seafarers of all nationalities should be established or developed in all ports of interest to international shipping where there is a need for them." (…) "All seafarers visiting a port should, where practicable and possible, have the opportunity of taking part in sports and outdoor recreation; for this purpose suitable facilities should be made available, for example by providing sports fields for the use of seafarers or by arranging for them access to existing sports fields." These standards are elaborated further in the Seafarers' Welfare Recommendation of 1987. In the simultaneous Seafarers' Welfare Convention No. 163 they are condensed in this article: "Each Member undertakes to ensure that welfare facilities and services are provided in appropriate ports of the country for all seafarers, irrespective of nationality, race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion or social origin and irrespective of the State in which the ship on which they are employed is registered."

With these standards in mind, a rough estimate would probably lead to some 500 international seafarers' centres. A majority of them are run by, or affiliated to, the Anglican Missions to Seamen, the Catholic Apostolatus Maris, the free church British & International Sailors' Society, and/or the Lutheran Deutsche Seemannsmission – two, three or even all four of them together under the same roof in some ports, and in other ports one by one. Another important player is the secular American United Seamen's Service. The HKF, one of the national welfare boards, is running international seafarers' centres in three Swedish ports. In some Swedish ports there are also Church of Sweden affiliated seafarers' centres. Elsewhere, some seafarers' centres are run by the port authority/company or – in previous and present state trading countries – by maritime trade unions.

Until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Yalta club was part of an all-union network of some 30 international seafarers' clubs (in Russian Interklub), intended for the foreign crewmembers of vessels calling at ports from Viborg in the west to Nakhodka in the east, and from Arkhangelsk in the north to Yalta in the south. The clubs used to be run by the Sea and River Workers' Union of the USSR. Formally, the local shipping company or the port authority was the "landlord" – a fact that didn't have any significance during l'ancien régime. After the desintegration, however, this state of affairs made the seamen's club services very vulnerable. The same counts for the parallel so called palaces of culture for seafarers (in Russian Dvorets Kultury Moriakov), at least previously available only for domestic seafarers and their families.

Keeping in mind that these seafarers' clubs obviously had a certain propaganda role to play during the Soviet era, it should also be stessed that they offered cultural and sports as well as other badly needed leisure services to visiting ships' crews, in accordance with the International Labour Organization instruments on seafarers' welfare of 1936, 1970 and 1987. 

Therefore, the ITF Seafarers' Trust as well as the ICSW and some of its member organizations have made strong and in some cases – i.e. the Yalta centre – successful efforts in order to support these centres when in jeopardy.

During this first post-Soviet decade, some seamen's clubs have discontinued operations completely, while some others have gone astray from what a seamen's club should be like. E.g. in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Riga and Odessa, the clubs have ceased. The situation in Saint Petersburg is obscure. In Odessa, what used to be a beautiful seamen's club has turned into a casino. In the eastern Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, the old Interklub of the Soviet days is feared to deviate into something else, while the previous Cultural Palace for (Soviet) Seafarers is reported to keep on operations as a Seamen's Cultural Centre in cooperation with the British & International Sailors' Society and under the patronage of the Novoship Shipping Company.

In addition to the Seamen's Cultural Centre of Novorossiysk, there are several more ex-Soviet seamen's clubs trying to pass the long winter of economic transition. Despite enormous hardships, devoted and self-sacrificing staff members try to keep on serving the seafarers. The centres are now situated in the reborn independent states of Latvia (Ventspils), Lithuania (Klaipeda), Russia (Viborg, Novorossiysk, Tuapse and Nakhodka) and the Ukraine (Izmail, Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, Ilychevsk, Yuzhny, Nikolayev, Kherson, Berdyansk, Mariupol, Kerch and Yalta).

The Yalta International Seafarers' Centre was inaugerated in 1957. The club has a perfect position in the Yalta townscape; next to the passenger vessels' jetties and at the one end of a popular water-front esplanade. The Port of Yalta owns the two-storey house, where the club occupies the first floor, accessible by an outdoor staircase. The services of the beautiful club premises include international telephone, TV and video set and a cafeteria. However, the "compulsory" table tennis and billiards tables are missing. The club doesn't pay any rent, nor does the Port of Yalta charge the club for electricity and water rates. Behind the big club room there is a smaller theater hall that, if refurbished, could once again be used for movie film and other performances.

In addition to the daily work carried out by the manager Emma Kuznetsova and her deputy Tatiana Sitalo, up to 30 volunteers assist carrying out excursions, sports activities etc. They do it for fun and in their own interest, mainly for practising their English skills, and they even pay an annual contribution to the club for having this opportunity.

Every little helps, and the meagre income of the club consists moreover of some irregular donations and contributions from the shipping community. Furthermore, the club get some income by selling beverages and souvernirs, as well as organizing courses and conferences. Due to very good relations with the Yalta Stadium staff, the club doesn't have to pay anything when seafarers' teams play football there. Basketball matches are played at a secondary school facility, also free of charge. 

Southern Crimea is a place of immense historical interest to all visitors, a true crossroad of cultures and civilizations during thousands of years. Therefore, the excursions is an important feature in the club services to seafarers. When an excursion bus is needed, a far to big one is normally rented together with a driver from one of the local sanatoriums. This practice is very expensive, so the Seafarers' Centre has tried to obtain a 24 seats' bus from the ITF Seafarers' Trust (which already has defrayed a thorough refurbishment of the club premises). Such a vehicle would be very suitable for the purpose. If it would be granted to the club, the Port of Yalta has committed itself to take care of the running costs and maintenance and supply the club with a driver. However, such a grant must be approved by the ITF affiliated Marine Transport Workers' Union of Ukraine, which for the time being is more engaged in the reconstruction of a seamen's club in Odessa.

During the regional seafarers' welfare seminar of September 1997, the Marine Transport Workers' Union gathered the representatives of the Ukrainian seamen's clubs to what proved to be an inaugural meeting of the union affiliated Ukrainian Association of Interclubs. However, the Yalta center is registred according to Ukrainian law as the Independent Charity Organization – Yalta International Seamen's Club. The board has 10 members, including the port manager, his two deputies, the local representative of the very same trade union, as well as Mrs Kuznetsova and Mrs Sitalo.

According to the by-laws, the club may choose to be or not to be a member of any national or international organization it wishes, and it may even start up branches if there is a need to do so. Such a need can be foreseen in nearby Sevastopol in the future: a growing merchant port and the seat of a nautical college as well as a shipyard.

From January till November 1998, the Port of Yalta received some 90 cruise vessel calls, 650 cargo ships' calls and some 30 Ukrainian passenger ships' calls. In addition to the excursions, mountain hiking tours, museum visits and other cultural events, the centre organized 51 football matches, 32 basketball matches and 23 volleyball matches. However, due to lacking routines they were not reported to the International Sports Committee for Seafarers (ISS, a sub-committee of the ICSW) secretariat, and therefore not taken into account in the Seven Seas series of these sports. According to a reasonable estimate, at least 15.000 seafarers took part in the activities of the seafarers' centre.

The cruising industry is very sensitive to political unrest. During the first half of 1999, the recent events in the Balkans have temporarily diverted a number of cruise vessels from the sea lanes to Yalta. 

The Kaknäs Seafarers' Centre has a very beautiful setting, clad in verdure in the midst of the Stockholm National City Park, the very first of its kind. When Filipino and other guests from long seaways away arrive at the center, they hardly believe their eyes when they find the adjacent oil port inferno shifted into a sort of Elysian fields with pheasants and other wildlife, shaded by magnificent oak trees.

Eken, "The Oak", used to be a popular nickname of Stockholm itself. When the sports ground for seafarers was inaugerated in 1952, Eken became the name of this dawning seafarers' centre, in the beginning hardly more than a football-field and a dressing-shack. Gradually, it developed and improved. The shack was replaced by a club house, which later on was enlarged. In the meantime, the name of the center changed to the one still in use. In the eighties, it was furnished with a small outdoor pool. Indoor, the center has all neccessary facilities, including telephone booth, billiards, table tennis, library, cafeteria. The decoration is very maritime. Mr Stig Elenius is the manager since 1985, when he swallowed the anchor after a long career as ship's cook and chief steward in world wide trade. Like his Yalta colleague Emma, Stig has one permanent collaborator and – especially during the summer peak – some temporary staff members.

For the transportation of seafarers Kaknäs has two minibusses, one of which sponsored by the ITF Seafarers' Trust.

The Kaknäs Seafarers' Centre is run by the Swedish Government Seamen's Service (HKF), which also runs the Rosenhill Seamen's Centre of Göteborg and the Johannisborg Seamen's Club of Norrköping. (Incidentally, the construction of the latter was almost completely defrayed by the ITF Trust Fund!) Moreover, the HKF has one port service representative each in Malmö and Helsingborg, as well as one each in Lübeck, Rotterdam and Antwerp. HKF operates under the auspices of the Ministry for Industry, Employment and Communications. It was founded with its present structure in 1976. A predecessor, the Swedish Merchant Navy Welfare Board, was founded in 1948 (thus the 50 th anniversary). The HKF might be called a "general store" of welfare services; covering most of them including port service, sports and fitness activities, seamen's libraries, daily news bulletins via satellite, distribution of newspapers, periodicals, movie films and recorded TV-programs and in a broader sense supporting and contributing to the maritime culture.

The cost of the services are covered by a small share of the fairway fees, levied by the National Maritime Administration on vessels calling at the Swedish ports. In addition to the special service to the Swedish seafarers aboard their ships, the HKF is serving seafarers of all nationalities while their ships are calling at Swedish ports.

Being a committed member of the ICSW, HKF is a very cooperative towards other players in the seafarers' welfare sphere. The ties to the Nordic sister organizations are traditionally very strong, as they are to the Church of Sweden Abroad, running the Swedish seamen's churches in foreign ports. The same counts for the Swedish ports. In Stockholm, the Kaknäs Seafarers' Centre is involved in a port service cooperation with both the local Seamen's Church and the Katarina Seamen's Club of the local Maritime Hotel. In accordance with the ILO standards, all three are knit together with other local maritime interests in a port welfare committee.

On the 18 th of April 1999, Mrs Emma Kuznetsova and Mrs Tatiana Sitalo of the Yalta International Seafarers' Centre arrived at Stockholm for a fortnight studded with seafarers' welfare activities. They had a flying start with a comprehensive information on the HKF, followed by a visit to the Parliament. There they were received by the HKF chairperson, Mrs Lisbet Calner, who happens to be a Member of Parliament.

At the Kaknäs Seafarers' Center Mr Stig Elenius and his staff members, Mr Ivan Sporje and Mr Roger Mohlin, briefed their Yalta colleagues about the club routines. Several views were exchanged, especially about the services to their mutual friends, the cruise vessel crewmembers. Unfortunately, the season was to early for any of them to loom up and thus to find familiar faces this far from Yalta.

The party shifted to the adjacent Loudden Oil Port, where they boarded a Swedish tanker, offering fresh newspapers and transportation to the center. The next several days, Emma and Tanya had many opportunities to get aquainted to cargo ship crews of various nationalities. They also visited the giant m/s Silja Serenade, one of the ferries plying the Stockholm-Helsinki trade (and a somewhat more luxorious counterpart to their "own" ferry liner, plying approximately the same distance between Yalta and Zonguldak, east of Istanbul).

Emma and Tanya also got aquainted to the staff members of the Seamen's Church of Stockholm and the Katarina Seamen's Club (of the Maritime Hotel). They got a thorough information on the services of these institutions.

While in Sweden, it was a matter of course to give them the opportunity to visit and study the other HKF centres as well; Johannisborg Seamen's Club of Norrköping (south of Stockholm), and Rosenhill Seamen's Centre of Göteborg, the major port of Scandinavia. At both centres, they got a good insight into the local characteristics of the ports and services. In addition to the HKF staff members, they also got aquainted to the seamen's church people of those ports. While at Rosenhill, they took the opportunity to visit the HKF affiliated Swedish Seamen's Library.

The HKF has a long tradition of cooperation with the Radio Sweden foreign service on shortwave, including a monthly service for seafarers. Now the Radio Sweden Russian language department heard of Emma's and Tanya's visit and invited them to an interview about their experiences. These included not only a thorough insight into the HKF operations, but also a good view of the Swedish society in general. Back home they intend to share these experiences with others via local media.

The next step in the Kaknäs-Yalta twin club exchange is a return visit by Stig to Yalta in October 1999. There are some anniversary gift funds left to cover his stay.

Hopefully, he will be able to assist Emma and Tania in preparing, if not carrying out, the very first international sports week for seafarers in Yalta!

Then the ball is with the ITF Seafarers' Trust and other international seafarers' welfare circles – and high time to give the signal to start a general seafarers' center twinning scheme, including the proposed scholarship to enable the poorer centres' staff members to take part?

Torbjörn Dalnäs, April 1999