Read up on what has been happening this week on our weekly editorial.
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Seeing behind the front door... |
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‘Seeing behind the front door’ was how one participant described Diaconia at the meeting I have been attending this week. The Transylvanian Reformed Church District and the Királyhágómellék Reformed Church District (Romania) brought together their international partners to discuss their vision for diaconia in their community and in their church.
‘Seeing behind the front door’ is key in Romania as it could be easy to believe that with membership of the European Union Romania is in a sound economic and social situation. As our friends shared with us this week, this is absolutely not the case. We were told that a lack of long term political planning, excessive change of government, low tax collection, high black market employment, aging society, high migration of youth and large scale national and household debt make for a very difficult situation with very high risk of poverty amongst many of the population. The Church wants to have a new structure to their diaconal work, uniting the various institutions and invigorating the congregational diaconal, that will respond to the needs of their communities today. We will be looking to see how Eurodiaconia can support this process.
This week we have also been looking ‘behind the front door’ at member states deliberations on the European Social Fund and rejecting what we have seen! We have joined with the European Anti Poverty Network and others to call on Member States to ensure that 20% of the financing available in the European Social Fund goes to projects combatting poverty and social exclusion. You can read the press release launching the campaign here and you can sign up to the campaign here. Please click and sign!
Have a good weekend
Heather |
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Meeting our Members - Understanding our Context |
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10 May 2012
After a couple of weeks of travelling to various external meetings and our Board meeting this week has been spent in Brussels. We are in the midst of preparing the AGM which will take place in Novi Sad, Serbia, in June - if you have not yet registered please do so as soon as possible! But the highlights of the week by far were meeting with two visiting groups. First, we welcomed a group from St Michaels Lutheran Church in Turku, Finland. The group run a very successful and inspiring project supporting and truly welcoming asylum seekers in their area, providing legal advice, assistance with accommodation and basic services and generally being a hospitable church. They also run an innovative project with Roma and non-Roma people in the community, trying to build bridges and understanding between all. It was a great example of a church being proactive in their local community and meeting the current needs in the current context.
Our second visiting group was from the Diocese of Vasteras in the Church of Sweden. Led by Bishop Thomas Söderberg the group had been meeting with organisations and groups in Brussels concerned with Social Economy. The diocese has recently started a large scale project on developing social economy in their diocese to support the most vulnerable. They now want to network with other social economy actors and in particular with other diaconal actors. I think we all left the meeting enthused about the potential for partnerships in this area across our membership! We will be exploring Social Economy in more depth at the workshop planned in June 2012 - more info on which is in the events section.
Meeting our members and understanding the work they do always inspires me. It is why we have our organisation - to be a diaconal network that learns and grows together and uses that learning to improve the social conditions in society - politically and practically. To do this we have to keep understanding our current context and the needs that are around us now. Sometimes our context challenges us to be proactive, other times reactive - but either way our context shapes our service. I will be off on my travels again next week - this time to Romania to contribute to a consultation of the Transylvanian Reformed Church on Diaconia within that church - and no doubt context will once again be a starting point.
Have a good weekend
Heather
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Speaking up for people at risk of poverty in the EU |
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4 May 2012
I was reading this week that 24.3% or 115 million people were at risk of poverty in Europe in 2010 (EUROSTAT). Poverty figures of today might be even more alarming which is why Eurodiaconia makes the fight against poverty and social exclusion one of her main priorities.
Heather, Clotilde and Laura were invited to go to the European Platform Against Poverty Stakeholder Dialogue that took place this week. It was a good opportunity to be informed on the state of play of the activities in 2012 as well as give input as to what the priorities for 2013 should be. Although the European Commission agrees with the need for investment in quality social services, they stress the value of policy evidence and statistics to back up financial decisions and “be more efficient in social service spending”. Let this be an encouragement and a call to Eurodiaconia members to continue to provide us with national figures on poverty, data on the evolution of the demand of services and the added value of their work, so that we can continue to support the European Commission and show that investing in services is worthwhile not only for the users but for society as a whole.
Besides attending the EPAP meeting, Clotilde met with the Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches to start preparing for the Europe 2020 seminar planned for December. This meeting will continue on from last year’s meeting and will show how members can get involved nationally in Europe’s 10 year strategy.
As for myself, I have met with a few of our partner organisations seeing how we can put into place a campaign calling Member States to stay accountable to their commitment to get 20 million people out of poverty by 2020. The annual report 2011 is also on its way to be published and we are working on the launch of the new Social Services Europe website. As I have the opportunity, I would like to highlight our photo exhibition “Diaconia Breaking Barriers: valuing the participation of older people in society’ that will take place on the 4th of December in the European Parliament together with a conference on ways to combat social exclusion of older people and the presentation of the Eurodiaconia Award 2012. If, as a member or a member of a member of Eurodiaconia, you have photos of services provided to, with and for older people, please do send them to me (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) so that we can showcase your work to key decision-makers. The deadline to send in photos is May 25th, find out how you can be a part of it here.
Wishing you all a very enjoyable weekend,
Aisling
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Social Services Under Pressure? |
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27 April 2012
This week I was invited to address European Ministers for Employment and Social Affairs in my capacity as Vice President of the Social Platform. The topic under discussion was 'Social Services Under Pressure' and was based on the premise that because of the crisis there was a need to find a more effective and efficient way to provide social services. As Social Platform, and I think on behalf of Eurodiaconia members, we rejected this premise. Let's be honest; it was not over-investment in social services and social welfare systems that caused the financial and economic crisis but it seems that it is the providers and users of social services that have to bear the consequences of the crisis. We challenged the ministers to change their starting point, to stop considering 'efficiency' (sometimes the code word for 'cheaper') and rather start from the notions of quality and investment. If there are quality social services with sufficient investment to ensure that they are adequately funded, universally accessible and affordible, supported by an enabling legislative framework and with the common mission of counteracting social exclusion and helping people find ways to improve their lives then they will ultimately be effective and efficient. I got the impression that some Ministers, and the European Commission, shared this view and our challenge is to work together to convince those Member States who perhaps see social services, and their users, as a burden and an expense rather than as an investment in social cohesion and participation. You can read the press release here.
I will have the opportunity to give a similar message to President Herman van Rompuy at the Social Platform General Assembly this week - we need the desires of the European Council to have economic growth 'dovetail' with the needs of people in Europe to have social cohesion and inclusion - lets hope he listens too!
In other news both Laura and Clotilde have been busy with Network Meetings. We held the Marginalisation and Exclusion Network, focusing on Child Poverty, in Sweden last week and this week the Healthy Ageing Network met in Vienna. Additionally, the Supervisory Board meets this week in Finland.. it has been a busy week.. But perhaps not as busy as the past couple of weeks have been for Catherine and Aisling in our team.. they both got married! We wish Aisling and Joël and Catherine and Pierre-Etienne every blessing in their new lives together!
Have a good weekend
Heather
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19 April 2012
After a very welcome Easter break it was back to business this week with a crash with the news that funding for poverty and social exclusion at a European level is under a real threat. The majority of Member States do not wish to 'ring fence' 20% of the new European Social Fund budget for poverty and social exclusion and also, perhaps even more scandalously, some Member States wish to abolish the European Food Aid Programme which provides emergency assistance to people in extreme destitution. It is hard to understand why Member States wish to reduce and abolish programmes that will enable people to participate fully in society and ensure their basic human and social rights. It is shaming that the majority of Member States of a European Union that commits itself in its legal documents to social justice is so weak when it comes to achieving social justice. We have written to all Member States to protest at this move and we are working closely with other NGO's to protect the possible funding for programmes for the most vulnerable among us. Thank you to those members of Eurodiaconia who have also taken action on this during this week. You can read our letter to member states here and the letter from the Federation Entraide Protestant here.
I also had the opportunity to be in Finland this week at seminar organised by the Church on Active Aging and Intergenerational Solidarity. Many different suggestions were made as to how we can have more generationally cohesive societies and I was pleased to be able to share some best practice from our members. I was also very pleased to see just how much the diaconal work of the Church of Finland is recognised. Maria Guzenina-Richardson, Minister of Health and Social Services stated in her speech 'Diaconal work done by the Churches is life saving'.
Have a good weekend,
Heather
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Monday, May 21, 2012
