We’re doing some really interesting work at the moment on trying to help foster new partnerships between the local and regional authorities and for local regional grassroots organizations. It’s interesting to create these lofty pan-European ideals, but how do you actually translate them down to a neighborhood level where they become national action plans and become tools that local communities can use to empower themselves and to force a change in their communities? That’s something I’m very proud of.
The other thing I’m very proud of is the way we reacted very quickly to what was happening in Ukraine. So you might remember that in the early days of the war, when you had the first wave of refugees– there was a very different kind of reaction from the EU, to a white Ukrainian refugee, compared to refugees, which were from African origins, being locked up at the border or even being sent back into Ukraine, because they somehow weren’t entitled to the same levels of protection. In our work, we focused quite heavily on making sure that first of all, this reality was being seen by the media. And second of all, making sure that politicians are being held to account to ensure that the borders were not proving to be new sources of racism, quite overt, blatant racism. So, those were two things that I’m very proud of.
