On 13-15 November 2023, we met in Warsaw for the event ‘CSOs at the forefront of refugees support – common challenges and solutions’. The meeting was attended by more than a hundred people representing CSOs from more than a dozen countries.
We discussed the experiences of civil society organisations supporting people with migration and refugee experience, looked for solutions to common challenges and established new relationships.
The event was opened by representatives of the Active Citizens Fund – Regional Programme team: Katarzyna Zakroczymska and Ewa Stokłuska. During the inauguration, the Ambassadors of Norway and Iceland, Øystein Bø and Hannes Heimisson, as well as the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Kevin J. Allen, emphasised the key role of CSOs in Poland in carrying out activities for people with refugee experience.
On the first day, we talked about the challenges of coordinating activities in the face of crisis and the pitfalls faced by rapidly expanding organisations. We shared good practices related to integration, empowering people with refugee experience and people from host communities, and building cross-sectoral partnerships. One session was about lawsuits against organisations and speakers on important public issues (Stategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – SLAPPs). There was also space to talk about experiences from the border, camps or working with people at risk of cross discrimination.
On the second day, the main themes included advocacy, working with volunteers, data collection and research, and most importantly, tackling activist and professional burnout. One of the workshop groups also worked on recommendations from CSOs to donors/grantees, which we will pass on to the representatives of the Financial Mechanism Office in Brussels.
In the evening we went to the Powszechny Theater for a STREFA WOLNOSŁOWA’s performative installation ‘The Empire’, inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and experiences from the Polish-Belarusian border. The performance was followed by a conversation with representatives of CSOs from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, who talked about the situation at the border and the work of aid workers, what refugees face in these countries and how the media, society or artists react to all this.
The meeting concluded with study visits to the Warsaw Ukrainian School, the Ocalenie Foundation and the Polish Migration Forum Foundation – we would like to thank them very much for their hospitality!
The event was a regional initiative, implemented by us together with the Active Citizens Fund – National Programme, as well as the operators of the Active Citizens Fund from Croatia, Greece, Lithuania and Romania.
photos: Karolina Szczepocka
