2020 has made everyone think about what is essential – caring for people, for society and for the planet that sustains us. Crisis is all around us: health, the economy, neo-colonialism, structural discriminations of all kinds, injustice and inequality, ecological collapse. And these crises are interconnected.

Thinking of applying for European Solidarity Corps? We will come together to share our unique experiences that came from our year as ESC volunteers. Get to know more about Erasmus+ and the ESC programme from our first hand experiences, at a time when activities had to be shifted around and how we managed to work on some of our projects regardless. We will be sharing results from selected projects and engage in open discussions on the processes while answering your questions.

One person from the EYFA office will be there to help you with organizational questions, application tips, and best practices on the ESC.

Are you ready to see new horizons, build new friendships, and learn how to challenge yourself? Then register at eyfa@eyfa.org to get the participation link!

We are very happy to announce and officially invite you to join the Online Youth Gathering for Climate and Social Justice, which will take place online from 3rd to 13th of September.

The main objective of the online gathering is to cover topics around Intersectionality, Commons, European Green Deal and the injustices behind the pandemic of Covid-19. Also we are aiming to collect young people’s visions for what European Green New Deal should look like, including concrete demands and goals for European and national governments. Apart from this, we will have a lot of additional sessions, to share, learn and enjoy.

Festival Y?! will take place 21 – 24 August 2020 in Estonia, Annimatsi Kamping, gathering individuals and grassroots groups to discuss how to build a strong and inclusive movement for systemic political action in the Baltics.

There is no place for racism or anti-black racism in our grassroots climate justice movement.

We encourage all of our network and readers of this website to self-educate (e.g. here bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES) and to reflect on the global state of pandemia and the recent uprisings for racial justice as opportunities to resist, dismantle, and sabotage this white-supremacist, colonialist regime. This uprising against excessive, brutal, and militarized policing has called attention to the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in our communities. There is no way forward without mobilizing our resources and energy towards the powerful ongoing efforts to defend black lives, to defund the police and towards the political necessity of reparations and related wealth redistribution.

As we are based in Germany, we find it important to acknowledge that anti-black racism is not a systemic problem only in the US, but also a european one. We stand in solidarity with the anti-racism movement here in germany whose activism combats pervasive institutionalized racism, condemns racialized police brutality and profiling, and decolonizes our streets. We stand in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives and all the intersectional internationalist movements fighting for decolonization and racial justice worldwide. 

Racial justice is climate justice. Black disabled lives matter. Black trans lives matter. Black lives matter.

After the onset of the Covid pandemic, we saw ourselves struggling to stay connected. We tried to imagine in which ways we could still offer support and solidarity when we cannot physically meet in our usual collective spaces, in our gatherings, workshops, retreats or trainings. We decided to reach out with a proposal for a small support structure for groups, initiatives and/or individuals within our network that had to stop their actions due to coronavirus, but still had expenses. Or, because of the crisis, started new activities or would like to do something and need money to continue or kick it off. For people, who lost their jobs or other sources of money, who can’t afford the current way of living, who support other people in need, who suffer from capitalism even more…

We created the CrisiFund Newsletter to share information about the different initiatives and individuals who reached out to this proposal. We are still feeling anxious and confused about the future and when and how we might all see each other again. But we want to continue to support and connect with one another despite the difficulties.

Lastly, to close off this newsletter, we share a list of tools and resources for safe, encrypted and open source online communication and facilitation.

Find here the full report, where based on the conversations with 20 organizers and movement analysts across six continents (EYFA is one of them) the author presents the challenges the movements face these days.

Radical Resilience is a film project by activists, for activists (or anyone involved in social or environmental change, however they define themselves), that aims to spread awareness and encourage discussion about the effects of burnout within our movements, both individually and collectively.

Groups from different countries involved in By2020 We Rise Up are issuing a call out to get back to the streets in June:

Due to the increasing need for care and solidarity during the lock-down moments of the pandemic, our volunteers are conducting weekly solidarity actions for people falling under certain risk group categories. Every Friday we will gather to do and deliver shopping for those unable to, cooking for the homeless, engaging in neighborhood book-exchanges, etc.

To join and help, write us at eyfa@eyfa.org. The actions will be documented and volunteers will have the opportunity to share knowledge and insights gained at an online info share on the 13th of August! Take care of one another.