Read up on what has been happening this week on our weekly editorial.
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16 June 2011
Just a short message this week as I am about to head off to Portugal for the General Assembly of the European Anti Poverty Network. It is quite a significant meeting as they will agree a new strategic plan and organisational structure - a little like we did last year. All organisations go through change and are affected by change so we have to constantly adapt our structures and ways of work. As you know, one of the things we have done in Eurodiaconia has been to develop the system of networks where more members can participate. Next week we will have the first meeting of the Marginalisation and Exclusion Network so I will tell you next week how it all went. We are also trying to support members in more specific ways and last week Catherine was in Warsaw to meet with our Polish members to see how we can support them to interact with the forthcoming Polish EU presidency. However, Poland has not yet identified any major social policy goals for their presidency which means we have to think more about what what we want to promote rather than react to. This week Laura has been in Helsinki, co-leading the common project on community engagement with interdiac. She will give you a report on this next week.
I also want to share with you that we have a new member of staff in our office. Hélène Konopski has joined us as Finance Officer. She will work one day a week taking care of all our accounting and financial matters. I am sure that most of our members will come into contact with her at some point and she is looking forward to getting to know our organisation. You can contact her in the usual way helene.konopski at eurodiaconia.org.
Have a good weekend
Heather
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8 June 2011
This week started off with a bit of a bang as first thing on Monday morning I was meeting with Laszlo Andor, European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs in my capacity as Vice President of Social Platform. We had the opportunity to talk about the future financial perspectives of the European Union in the broad terms and the specifics of programmes such as PROGRESS and the European Social Fund - the latter which is very important to many of our members and the former which is crucial for our future as an organisation. We were also able to talk about the National Reform Programmes process and the recent Roma communication. I was reminded in the discussion that each member state is now encouraged to develop a national Roma strategy by the end of the year so our members might want to see how they can be involved in this process at national level. Please contact
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in the secretariat for more information.
Yesterday, the commission gave their opinions on the National Reform Programmes that have been proposed by member states. You may remember that this is part of the process outlined in the European Semester and we sent you a briefing on this earlier this year. Generally, the social dimension of the NRP's has been very weak and this is partially echoed in the Commission analysis. But, as ever the focus is not on the social dimension but the economic dimension without any relationship between economic governance and social impact. We will look to analyse the NRPs' in the coming weeks and will come back to you with some more thoughts and perhaps some actions at national level and European level. In the mean time you can see the Commission comments here.
Apart from this, I have been planning the autumn this week (I like to be organised..) as I will have the chance to visit and meet several members in Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Serbia and possibly Slovakia.. As you know, we take communication and meeting with our members as a priority and so we try to fit as much as is realistic in our calendars. Today, Catherine is in Poland to meet our Polish member to talk about the forthcoming EU presidency. Next week, Laura will be Finland with the study visit that is part of the joint interdiac/Eurodiaconia project to support members work on community engagement. Over the next two weeks we will have the 1st meeting of the Marginalisation and Exclusion Network and the Healthy Ageing and Elderly Care Network - so we hope we will see some of you then. We are also developing our members presence on our website and
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is looking for members to send back the requested information to create member specific web-pages.. if you have not done it yet, please send it back as soon as possible.
And finally, no mention of membership would be complete without announcing another new member - Diakonie Kosovo. More information on them can be found elsewhere in the E-news but let me just say Welcome!
Have a good weekend
Heather
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That was the week that was.... |
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30 May 2011
So, the Annual General Meeting has come and gone.. 55 of us gathered in Florence - sadly a few people could not join us due to the ash cloud and other flight problems - to review our work over the past year, plan the next year, elect a new Board, visit projects and take part in discussion on poverty, migration, roma and social exclusion - not a small amount of work for three days! It was a great AGM. Delegates were really motivated to develop our network and to contribute to the reflections on our common work. Welcoming three new members was also encouraging and hearing from other potential members made us think about other organisations where there is potential for co-operation and partnerships. Having guests from interdiac and EDYN cemented the important co-operation we have with both of them and working closely with our members the Diaconia Valdese in the organisation enabled us to learn more about each other.
A highlight for me was the Global Cafe style discussions we held after a panel of experts debated our theme of 'poverty across borders'. The discussion in the Global Cafe was very inspiring, bringing to the forefront the different situations of poverty and social exclusion apparent in European society today and what choices we have to make, in the face of cuts and uncertainties, about how we best answer the existing and emerging needs. It was also useful to have Freek Spinnenwijn from FEANTSA and Niccolo Rinaldini, an Italian MEP, with us for these discussions as they were able to give expert external insight to the questions. Representatives from our members also gave very important insight from the providers perspective. There are many other highlights of the week - the study visits, the discussions on finance and activities as well as the informal discussions and fun!
We also elected a new Board and I am looking forward to working with all of them in the coming years. Jarmo Kökkö was relected as chairperson and I look forward to continuing our excellent working relationship. We have come a long way over the past years but we could go much further and I am sure that our new Board will be able to steer us along the way.
Organising an AGM is a big task and could not be done without the commitment of our hosting member and my colleagues in the staff team - all worked really hard to make this AGM a real success. But, just as a network cannot exist without its members, nor can an AGM happen without its delegates so I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all the delegates at this years' AGM for making it such a successful, inspiring and fun event. We are looking forward to the next AGM in 2012, to be hosted by the Ecumenical Humanitarian Organisation in Serbia, to be even better!
Have a great week and weekend,
Heather
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As I mentioned last week, I attended the 10th Meeting of People Experiencing Poverty last weekend here in Brussels. Co-hosted by the European Commission, the Hungarian Presidency and organized by the European Anti Poverty Network the meeting aims to give people experiencing poverty and exclusion the chance to speak to each other and direct to decision makers. Nearly 200 people who have experienced homelessness, unemployment, exclusion and poverty spoke about the realities of the impact of the financial and economic crisis, particularly on the employment market. This was coupled with demands for minimum income, good social services and flexibility in employment – a sort of Active Inclusion plus.
This is the second time I have been to this meeting and in some ways it both inspires me and depresses me. It depresses me because I hear the same stories about exclusion I have heard at previous meetings and in other fora and the same people propose the same solutions – that make sense – but no one seems to listen to them. But on the other hand I am inspired by seeing people who have experienced great hardship stand up for their own right to a dignified life and the rights of others and put forward practical, workable solutions to poverty and exclusion. Sometimes, in our offices here in Brussels we can get a bit caught up in the policy process and miss the practicalities – but as someone recently reminded me ‘you can’t eat paper’. Therefore we need to think more about how the policy is turned into practice and vice versa.
Within Eurodiaconia we also need to think how to involve the users of our services more effectively. Could we start having meetings on Marginalization and Exclusion where the practitioners and the users both participate? What do we need to develop as methods of participation in order to make this meaningful and empowering for all participants? How do we encourage self organizing of people with experience of poverty and exclusion? Some members are doing this already and we could develop more learning on this topic.
Perhaps we will have a chance to talk about this next week at our Annual General Meeting. We are almost ready to start now and the final arrangements are in place. You will see elsewhere in the Enews that for the first time we will be broadcasting the AGM over the internet – so if you can’t be with us in Florence you can follow us on line. Also watch out for the regular updates from Florence on the website.
Have a great weekend
Heather |
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12 May 2011
Today we registered our 56th delegate to the Annual General Meeting. it is a record! So now the team are trying to finalise the details of the various workshops, panels and other sessions that will happen in Florence in two weeks time and Aisling is busy finalising documents and ensuring that everyone knows where to go and when. I think we are all quite excited by the AGM and having so many members present!
But just because we have our AGM it does not mean that the other work we do with partners and policy stops.. This week Laura has been attending the CALL Network (Church Action on Labour and Life), an initiative of the Church and Society Commission of CEC and we will be looking at how to develop further co-operation on employment - particularly active inclusion and access to employment. Catherine and Liesbeth have been finalising a great publication on volunteering and Eurodiaconia, showcasing members volunteering programmes and how volunteers are recruited and supported. This will be published by the end of May. We have also been finalising initial work on the European Social Fund which will be one of the major political debates from the summer and we will be asking our members for your input later in the year and Krista continues to look at the social impact of the financial crisis on our members and the people they serve.
We have also been following the development of the European Commission's thinking on Social Economy and Social Innovation/Experimentation as these are core pillars of the European Platform Against Poverty and we will be exploring some of this at the AGM. We have also been gathering feedback from our members in Hungary about some very concerning decisions regarding street homelessness which we hope to follow up at the Marginalisation and Exclusion Network in June. Finally, this week, I will be one of the facilitators at the 10th European Meeting of People Experience Poverty, being held in Brussels and with the theme of 'Employment, Work, Jobs - The reality for people experiencing poverty and social exclusion'. The event is co-organised by the EAPN, European Commission and Hungarian EU Presidency. This is the second time I have participated in this meeting and it always makes me think about how we could more effectively involve the users and participants in our projects and services in Eurodiaconia. I don't yet have any answers but I hope that over the next few days I might start to get some ideas which I will try and share with you next week.
Have a good weekend
Heather
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Thursday, May 23, 2013
