For many newbies the INKOM serves as a warm first welcome and introduction to the rich facilities of student life that Maastricht has to offer. Like any other group, we as grassroots organisations and smaller organisations who are looking to build a community want to present ourselves to the new students at the INKOM.
But again we are quite shocked by the fee for a stall at Welcome to Maastricht Market at the INKOM. The 100 euro is an enormous threshold for organisations such as ours. Some of our organisations depend only on donations, because their message will not be supported by institutions - such as a free Palestine or the strive for an anticapitalist world. Other groups who do get a certain subsidy would rather spend that money on printing flyers to hand out to new students in the search for new volunteers to support the grassroots initiatives in 2022/23.
This threshold implies that the more commercial parties do have access to INKOM, whereas smaller grassroots do not. We know that this 100 euro is one of the lowest fees that INKOM asks of participants (or partners, as they prefer to call it). But in previous years this was indeed a reason for some of us not to join the Welcome to Maastricht Market.
With this open letter we hope to convince INKOM to reconsider the fee and change policies to lower the fee by 75 percent. We hope that INKOM truly wants to offer a fair reflection of all the groups that are active in the scene.
This open letter is supported by:
Extinction Rebellion Maastricht
Internationale Socialisten Zuid-Limburg
Maastricht for Climate
Free Palestine Maastricht