Between 12th and 16th of October, Federation of Young European Greens held its annual working groups meeting in Brussels, Belgium. As in the previous years, the aim of the meeting was to gather members from the 10 active working groups under the FYEG in order to work jointly on exchange of ideas, creation of an action plan and development of strategies for its implementation in the forthcoming period.
Since the priorities of the FYEG for the 2016 and 2017 are Climate, Migration and the Future of Europe, this year’s meeting focused on migration, culture and identity. As a sister organization, CDN was invited to take part in discussing and planning future independent and joint activities. According to the current needs and topical priorities of the CDN, our Executive Committee decided to offer this opportunity to its two working groups: Digital [X] and our recently established Migration Working Group.
During these four days, we had the opportunity to meet with some of the Members of the European Parlament and among them Terry Reintke, with whom we talked about the position of the Greens in the European Parliament. Since one of the things we strive for is raising capacities and contributing to social empowerment, we used this time to learn from each other and share knowledge on fundraising, project management, communication and civil disobedience through multiple workshops and training.
On the side of the CDN Migration working group members this first live meeting was an amazing opportunity to get to know each other and evaluate past activities. We talked about our very first and successful webinar and worked on currently scheduled ones, such as writing for our new Medium platform. In more detail, we agreed on upcoming activities in compliance with what we have imagined for the long run in 2017.
As a group we would like to organise an international campaign on awareness raising about migrations. We thought of opening a website that would be inspired on Humans of New York, where we could portray and tell short stories of people coming to Europe. TEDx context was one of the proposals, in which newcomers to Europe could share their stories. We decided to apply for fundings to organise a training course or a study session. And finally, members of our group will try to visit places where refugees are – during COP22 those present in the Marocco could visit crossing points and camps in the north of Africa, while the rest of us would like to plan a come-back visit to a camp in Idomeni, where some of the young greens have worked before.
In order to strengthen our capacities, we have also met with FYEG’s Migration working group with an intention to, through various activities, contribute to understanding of the comprehensiveness in the context of migration and displacing threshold of inclusiveness towards equality.
Migration Working Group