Save the date for our next event for our project ‘Anti-Racist Digital Resource Sharing’ under the theme “Racism Kills at the Eur-African Borders From Awareness to Action“, in collaboration with the Chkoun Collective.
Program and details can be found on IG @eyfa_berlin or check out Chkoun on their socials.
About the event
Anti-Black racism across Northern Africa—though deeply rooted in histories of slavery, colonialism, and nation-building—remains largely erased or denied in public discourse. This erasure persists despite the increasing violence faced by Black populations in countries like Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya. From state-sponsored anti-Black policies and border militarization to the everyday acts of racial violence and social exclusion, Black North Africans and Black migrants and refugees in the region face multilayered oppression at the crossroads of race, nationality, gender, and class.
Today, these realities are sharpened by Europe’s externalization of its border regime. Northern African states are not only complicit in but active agents of racialized migration control. This has led to violent pushbacks, arbitrary detentions, and all sorts of human rights violations, disproportionately affecting Black people on the move and Black residents without state protection.
Join us for an afternoon of learning, discussion, exchange, and creating or solidifying BIPoC networks for social justice.
Please reach out by email or IG if you have any questions or requests 🙂
Join Black Buddhist Lama Rod Owens for a free workshop on healing, rest, and homecoming for Black folks on September 18th.
Meditation & embodied tools as part of our project “Decolonial Queer Ecology”!
DEEP ROOTS
Join Black Buddhist Southern Queen Lama Rod Owens for a half-day workshop, offering a space of restoration, and reconnection for Black people. No matter how we think of home, it is a place that many of us need. Home is the experience of taking refuge in something that restores us through love. Homecoming is opening to how home is calling us into being held and cared for.
Drawing from Lama Rod’s transformative practice of the Seven Homecomings – Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Ancestors, Earth, Silence, and Self – the session will explore what it means to truly come home to ourselves and to each other in the midst of apocalypse. This practice, shared in Lama Rod’s book Love and Rage, combines the three traditional sources of refuge in Buddhism with other important sources of refuge that embrace our diverse cultural, racial, sexual, and radical identities, so that we can bring our whole lives into this werk.
Come experience a simple yet empowering offering that will help us feel resourced with radical honesty, compassionate love, and a dedication to liberation for all.
DEEP BREATHS
You can take home practical tools for grounding, connection, and sustainability in your personal and political lives.
Meditation, Movement, Ancestor, Love and Compassion practices to support emotional processing and release.
Earth based rituals and practices in the garden, focusing on connection and our place within the ecosystem.
Reflections on sustainable organizing for Black communities, with a focus on rest as resistance, spiritual abolitionism, and collective care.
The venue in Berlin Kreuzberg is accessible with a wheelchair and has a garden. If you have more questions regarding the accessibility reach out to eyfa@eyfa.org. There are very limited spots, sign up via the link. The event is free of charge, donations welcome at the event.
If you can’t make it please let us know early enough so your spot can be given to someone else. We especially encourage Black LGBTQI* folks to join the event.
FURTHER INFO
Venue
The event takes place in Berlin Kreuzberg.
The venue has indoor & garden space, bring warm cloths/a blanket.
Accessibility
The venue is accessible by wheelchair.
If you have further accessibility questions, feel free to reach out to eyfa@eyfa.org
The workshop is held in english without sign language translation
Registration
Spots are very limited, please sign up via the link provided.
If you can’t make it, let us know in advance so we can offer your spot to someone else.
Cost
The event is free of charge.
Who’s Invited?
THE WORKSHOP IS FOR BLACK, AFRICAN, AFRODIASPORIC PEOPLE
We especially encourage Black LGBTQI* folks to join.
We’re looking forward to your registrations HERE :))
Cover of the Zine Trans Empowerment Film Exchange — Summer 2024
We’re happy to share with you the TEFE Zine, a collective publication emerging from the Trans Empowerment Film Exchange (TEFE) that took place this summer. The zine brings together reflections, texts, visuals, and political questions developed by participants throughout the process, capturing shared learnings, tensions, and visions rooted in Intersectional Queer&Trans organising across Europe.
Created through non-formal, collaborative methods, the TEFE Zine is both an archive of the encounter and a tool for ongoing movement-building. It reflects on solidarity in practice, collective care, and the realities of organising across borders, identities, and lived experiences.
The zine is available to read and share. We hope it sparks conversations, reflections, and new connections within your communities and beyond!
‘I’d like to put the making of this zine into context. I’ve been an immigrant since I was a child, having been forcibly displaced from my home country because of a conflict that’s spanned enough generations and seen enough violence that our people’s diaspora is larger than the total population of some European nation-states that have existed for centuries.
I am no longer that child, but as I fully embody the choices that I have made in the early years of my adulthood, the things that I have come to accept and embrace about myself, my background, my identity and my trauma, that child’s curiosity and wish to go home has resurfaced…”
To check more stories download our new zine ‘NECESSITY NECESSITY’, a report on queer diaspora and trans* voices.
We, EYFA, would like to start by introducing ourselves and our work for those who still don’t know us. EYFA developed from a tour that was initiated by a Swedish/German group in 1986 to save the old-growth forests in Europe: then named European Youth Forest Action. From these beginnings, EYFA has developed into a network of individuals, grassroots organisations and collectives working to transform local and international communities in their approach to environmental and social, political and economic positions.
EYFA provides a platform and practical support for new radical ideas to grow into their full potential.
The international office located in Berlin coordinates EYFA’s activities through administrative and communication functions and being the network’s contact point for sharing local information.
EYFA focuses particularly on intersectional youth-initiated activities and projects. EYFA projects are mainly for young people, giving them the opportunity to act and encouraging them to participate actively on local and international levels.
The time for another Network Meeting is soon approaching us once again. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the Network meeting did not take place in 2020 and neither in 2021. This year we are back and we would like to, just like in 2019, have our meeting in a bigger event, where we can have the chance to meet other people / groups who are working on campaigns and initiatives that might be new, exciting and/or inspirational to us!
In 2019 we have joined theKlimaCamp in Rheinland. This year’s chosen event is ‘Women waving future’, an international conference that will take place in Berlin. The conference will bring together women activists from different corners of the world, based in Europe and beyond and will be a space for sharing experiences, stories of resistance, struggle and passion. Via intersectional lenses we will be able to understand better the different challenges women face and it’s inter-connection with multiple struggles, such as: gender, class, race, health, education, displacement / forced migration, motherhood, war, ecology / climate justice. Applying an multi-generational approach, we would like to make a direct link to current struggles around the globe and it’s impact in young women and girls. Let’s learn together how to fortify our support networks, learning from elders and super women that are at the forefront of global social change.
When: November 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th (arrival on the 4th) Where: Technische Universität, Berlin, Germany (5th – 06th) New Yorck im Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (7th – 08th)
Aims:
Team building
Expanding network
Share our believes and main focus and the intersections of our fights / community building approaches
Collaborations and how could we work together
Who is coming?
We would really like it for new people to come to this years meeting and for this we want to reserve at least 8 spots for new members/new comers.
Food for Thought
Building an international network is an ongoing task. We do our best to keep in touch and be open for new people. We write and write and write (newsletter, reports, emails, notes) and sometimes we meet. The network meeting is one of the few occasions to see each other in person, that is why if you feel like engaging in the network, reflecting on our current work (to make it better), being/joining the orga group, spreading your ideas or initiating something, or you are simply wondering what is the network, – you should come.
Most of the invitations here are reaching out to groups rather than individuals, in the hope that it will help us meet the meeting aims, and that it could simplify the invitation process. We offer 1 to 3 places per group and we want to reserve 8 spots for new people. We want to acknowledge that sometimes people’s commitments go beyond one group, and therefore some individuals may be invited through more than one group. At the same time, we are inviting a handful of persons who may not subscribe to a group active in the network but who have put their heart and soul into it lately.
There is a rough plan for the program’s content, thinking that maybe this meeting is a good opportunity for you to talk about something with others, share your skills or fears (yes, this world is scary). Or you see there is something missing in the aims above? Write us. If you have any suggestions for the program, would like to add something to it, etc, please write us with your ideas. The more input the better to make this meeting fruitful for all of us.
Important: if you need a visa to come to Germany please let us know ASAP, so we can help you with the invitation and finances.
Expressions of interest to be sent to 2022@eyfa.orgas soon as possible, till the 10th of October. Questions, suggestions are welcome any time.
Please note, that the network meeting is only one element of the long and beautiful process of keeping the network strong, there are other ways to be active within it and we try them all. Do not be sad if you cannot come, there will plenty of opportunities to join us again.
Looking forward to hearing from you! EYFA Office
Confirmation deadline: October 10th How much: The Network Meeting is free of charge. Eyfa will provide the accommodation in a hostel / hotel and in shared rooms at our Berlin based member’s home. Food will be provided. If you need support covering your travel expenses please contact us!!!
