Volunteering in Wichita, Kanzas

The European fellows Vladislav Petkov (Bulgaria), Robert Bekefi (Hungary) and Elena Carbunaru (Romania) volunteered in the logistical preparation of a fundraising event – Second Annual Art Auction. The event was organized in Anna Murdock’s café in Wichita, Kansas by The Seed House (Casa de la Semilla) and took place on October 12th 2013.

77 pieces of art donated by local and external artists were offered to the public on silent and live auction. The European fellows helped with moving furniture, arranging spaces, decoration and other logistical details.

Direct action of CCH advocates in front of Chicago mayor’s office

Over the past year and a half, housing and social service advocates in Chicago have worked quietly to tackle a controversial issue — easing CHA’s long-standing restrictions on residents with criminal records. They formed a Re-entry committee, drafted a pilot program and found a sympathetic ear at the very top of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) — Charles Woodyard, who just last month committed to keep meeting with them about the idea.
On October 17, the members of Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) decided to take a direct action and visit the Chicago Mayor’s office. European interns Lia Gaudi and Boba Baluchova joined the group of CCH advocates in order to deliver the letter to Rahm Emanuel’s office — to request a meeting about the proposed CHA Re-entry Pilot Project.

Pastor Charles Austin is one of the advocates with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) on the issue of CHA withholding housing from people re-entering from incarceration brought to light by CCH’s Reentry Committee. According to him: “After coming out from the County Jail people are suggested to rebuild their life. But it is very hard to rebuild the life without the foundation of a stable place to live. This Re-entry project can help convicted offenders find place to live more quickly.”
It was very interesting direct action. But also the debriefing led by the director of CCH was also very important in order to understand the process of thinking, planning and acting of community organizers. European fellows took photos and recorded the video of whole event.

European Fellows took part in “Take back Chicago”

On Tuesday evening European fellows took an action and joined almost 3 000 Chicagoans in the fight to take back the jobs, schools, housing and safety net. On October 15, Romanian fellow Lia Gaudi and Slovak fellow Boba Baluchova (the newest interns in ‘Chicago Coalition for the Homeless’: CCH) with 150 co-workers, organizers and leaders from CCH attended the event: “Take Back Chicago!” in UIC Forum at 5 pm. The girls were there already at 3 pm and helped the organizers from the core organizations ‘Grassroots collaborative’ & ‘Stand up! Chicago’ to set up the room and distribute printed materials about the event.

At this event about 35 organizations called for affordable housing, fair taxes, increasing of minimum wage, stop public schools’ closing (more info: http://standupchicago.org). Majority of the main hall of UIC Forum (fast-food and supermarket workers etc.) declared that a salary: 8,5 USD/per hour is not enough for living in dignity…

The fellows Annamaria Kovacs (Hungary) and Laura Stefanut (Romania) joined their friends Lia & Boba and took a lot of photos during the rally. Being present during the preparation of program, planning the agenda and setting up the room is very important for community organizer – to use the power of people, to have a control of event and to push the guest-speakers (politicians on hot chair on the stage) to make right decisions. It was inspiring rally – full of courageous people.

Direct Action in Wichita

Elena Carbunaru (Romania), Robert Bekefi (Hungary) and Vladislav Petkov (Bulgaria), who are doing their internship in Wichita, Kansas, took part in a direct action that took place on October 15th 2013. The protest happened during Kansas Policy Institute’s annual dinner in Wichita.

KPI is part of American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC) and is connected to manipulative researches that feed bad policy and legislation proposals in the sphere of education, healthcare and environment. The protest was organized in collaboration between trade unions and community organizations and groups, among which Sunflower Community Action, Wichita.

European fellows visited Tim Griffin’s office in Little Rock

Kalina Hristova (Bulgaria) and Oana Botezan (Romania) with Arkansas Community Organizations were part of the group that visited U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin’s office in Little Rock delivering a letter calling for him to vote to end the government shut down, lift the debt ceiling, end the automatic spending cuts and raise revenue by closing corporate tax loopholes. ACO was coordinator of the meeting.

More info: http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2013/10/15/pastorjudge-urges-tim-griffin-to-reopen-federal-government

European fellows volunteering at the Immigration Reforming March in Chicago

Korean immigrants and Slovak fellow Boba during the march in Chicago

European fellows from Hungary (Zsofi), Bulgaria (Victoria), Slovakia (Boba) and Romania (Laura) did also a bit of volunteering on Saturday (October 12, 2013) in Chicago. Boba and Laura helped their co-fellows Zsofi and Victoria (from the same fellowship program in U.S., coordinated by Great Lakes Consortium for international training and development & thanks to U.S. department financial support) during very interesting march on immigration reform, organized by one of the hosting organization ICIRR.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is a statewide coalition of more than 130 organizations dedicated to promoting the rights of immigrants and refugees to full and equal participation in the civic, cultural, social, and political life of our diverse society.

European fellows Zsofia and Victoria as ICIRR volunteers at immigration reform march in Chicago – 12 October 2013

Thousands of immigrant leaders and families and allies from immigrant rights, labor, faith communities marched on October 12th to demand that Congress should pass immigration reform with dignity, justice and respect for all immigrants.
The action started at Teamster city at 12pm and it ended around 4pm at Daley Plaza in Chicago city. Zsofi and Victoria prepared the banners and posters for the march and helped organizers to gather people from different neighborhoods of Chicago. Laura and Boba took photos, videos and made notes for their reports. The marching people demanded that the federal government should halt deportations, stop the further criminalization of immigrants, and pass legalization that includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants. We could see hundreds of banners and posters with slogans like: “Legalizacion ahora”, “Obama, escucha! Estamos en la lucha!”; and we could hear the sentences like: “Stop the deportations.”; “Families together.”; “Enough is enough.”

The Most Important idea that we’ve learn that day was: How powerful and strong one crowd of thousands of courageous people can be – when it’s well organized (people stand together to achieve their goal – basic human rights). It can have very strong influence on politicians & decision makers!

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The Fall European Delegation is ready to explore Community Organizing in U.S.

The second European delegation with 19 fellows will be in  the U.S. from September 30 – November 9, 2013. They will participate in group seminars, round-table discussions, site visits, and had interactions with United States leaders. A tailored 3-week internship with mentoring, multicultural events, and participation in volunteer activities as well as in the Professional Fellows Congress in Washington, D.C. will also be included in the 6-week professional fellows program. Participants will prepare a 6-9 month  individual and group Action Plan for follow on activities. They  will have opportunities to experience the American family life and the diversity in the U.S. through staying with American host families during showbox download their internship in Little Rock (Arkansas), Chicago (Illinois), Manchester (New Hampshire), Langley Park (Maryland), Toledo (Ohio), Detroit (Michigan)  Wichita (Kansas), St. Paul (Minnesota), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania and   New York (New York).

Download in PDF – Fall European Delegation

26 alumni successfully completed their projects

During the spring/summer of 2013 the Great Lakes Consortium announced a small grant application opportunity to any of the 2012 alumni for them to complete some projects. Small grants (under $2,000 each) helped to cover expenses of the projects but alumni contributed their volunteer time, brought in additional resources and engaged others to do the same. Small grant support was also available to create training materials or other publications that are connected to this exchange program so more people can benefit from the experience. From the four countries altogether 26 of the 32 alumni submitted applications and successfully completed their projects by August 30, 2013.

They proposed and implemented a variety of activities including issue organizing, parent and/or youth organizing, training/seminar/workshops, involving disadvantaged people from urban or rural communities, with special emphasis on Roma and disabled people. As pokemon go gps signal not found a result thousands of people became familiar with com-munity organizing and many of them were youth who got very interested to continue this type of community work. In the small grant projects alumni collaborated with others who participated in different exchanges and they brought back different experience to share. Some U.S. mentors also helped the alumni in the organizing in Europe and/or preparing training materials.

Read more about the activities in the newsletter