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Slovenia, April 2019

Continuing our project of promoting activism, we organized five meetings with youth in Slovenia. We have visited schools in Sežana and Maribor and the department of Anthropology of the university in Ljubljana.

Altogether, we met about 150 young Slovenians and had a really valuable time with them. We shared our individual experiences and stories and presented the Civil March for Aleppo as an example of an action which inspired many. Relating to its challenges and outcomes, we intended to encourage our audiences to be more active in their daily life. We hope, that to some extent, we succeeded.

These events were organized in cooperation with two other former participants of the CMFA – Anna Permondo and Alexander Stotkiewitz.

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Riace (Italy), October 2018

Post author By admin
Post date October 31, 2018
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A few days ago Janusz and Jan were visiting Calabria while taking part in Sabir Fest 2018.

In these days Janusz spontaneously joined one of the groups travelling from Reggio Calabria to join the protests in Riace. Here are his pictures and a short description of the issue.

Riace, a small village in Italian Calabria is a great example of how a local community can successfully offer shelter to undocumented refugees and integrate them fully into its life.

Since 1998, Riace has been following the strategy of welcoming refugees and through that, giving new life to their fastly depopulating village. Again, since 2016, Riace’s mayor Domenico Lucano made of Riace a global village where 500 refugees and asylum seekers from 20 countries are hosted.

Earlier this month, mayor Lucano was accused of aiding illegal migration. In response, more than 6.000 protesters came to Riace to protest against these accusations.

Result: Mayor Lucano has been banned from town and the government of Italy is to transfer the migrants of Riace away.

#RIACE

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Sabirfest, October 2018

Hello it’s Jan here. This month I had the pleasure to take part in Sabir Fest. It’s an annual festival taking place in Messina, Catania and Reggio di Calabria.

It focuses on promoting the common culture of Mediterranean and strengthening the connection of civil societies from opposing shores of the sea. This is how Gianluca Solera, one of the founders of the festival explains it in his recent blog.

“A group of activists from the Mediterranean region, known under the name of Maydan, has been hosted there over the last five years to hold dialogues and debates on the challenges of the region, with special focus on the status of #democracy, freedoms and rights, intercultural dialogue, international #solidarity, ecological transition and human mobility.”

Within the community gathered around the festival, the spirit of international solidarity and awareness of our interconnectedness above the administrational borders is really strong. I take a lot of inspiration and motivation from it. I was happy to share the experience with Janusz. He took pictures not only during the festival but also joined important protests in Riace.

We met many experienced activists, some of them I already knew from the previous edition of the festival .