Thirteen civil society leaders from five countries just became the newest class of GLC alumni: and their stories are too good to keep to a paragraph.
From March to July 2026, the GLC Alumni Network ran its first-ever Virtual Fellowship Program “Building People Power for Social and Environmental Justice”. Over 25+ hours of training, praxis groups, and one-on-one mentoring, grassroots leaders from Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia worked alongside US-based organizers to sharpen their community organizing practice – and came out the other side with concrete plans to bring it home.
The cohort is as varied as the network itself: a molecular geneticist building Bulgaria’s first rare-disease patient registry, an English teacher on maternity leave organizing around climate anxiety in Bratislava, a cultural manager working to preserve Bulgaria’s chitalishta tradition, a communications strategist launching a cross-sector community of practice. Antoaneta Toncheva (Bulgaria, Virtual Fellowship 2026) left the program rethinking the difference between power over people and power with them. Monica Jitariuc (Romania, Virtual Fellowship 2026) came in expecting a program about protest and charity, and left calling organizing “the power and the craft to turn loneliness into power”. Every fellow was paired with a US mentor, drawing on decades of organizing experience across the Atlantic.
Want the full story? Our Virtual FP 2026 Delegation Newsletter profiles all 13 fellows in detail: their bios, their mentors, their program highlights, and the follow-up projects they’re already building in their communities.
