On 22-24 April, in Tirana, BCSDN’s Head of Policy and Advocacy, Anja Bosilkova-Antovska, participated in the first convening of the PxP Eastern Europe and Eurasia Regional Organizing Collective (E&E ROC). The event brought together PxP implementing partners and a diverse group of participants from over 12 countries, including BCSDN members from Albania and Kosovo, to discuss the regional context, needs, and challenges, towards identifying how to better support nonviolent activism and social movements (NVSM) in the region.
Powered by the People (PxP) is a global multi-year initiative, funded by USAID and led by PartnersGlobal, that seeks to provide direct and accessible support to nonviolent social movements and other allied civic actors around the world. To ensure that social movements, activists, and actors in the wider movement ecosystem have direct influence on the strategic direction of the program, PxP is convening Regional Organizing Collectives (ROCs) in five priority regions (Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa). The ROCs aim to enable participatory multi-stakeholder dialogue spaces for activists, social movement leaders, civil society representatives, researchers and scholars, and donors to create connections, facilitate learning and exchange, and provide advice on the priority issues and support mechanisms of PxP.
The meeting served initially to create a shared understanding of PxP and the ROC as a strategy and process to put local voices at the center of the initiative, developing the priorities for the project’s activities. On the second day, participants discussed, reflected, and collectively analysed the nonviolent social movement context in the region and subregions. Engaged in mapping of trends and threats in each of the sub-regions, participants discussed the state of democracy, the security risks of NVSM, and the narratives around them. In the Western Balkans sub-region, participants stressed the shrinking civic space, systemic corruption and non-transparency of the public institutions that erode democracy, and the lack of public trust in CSOs, with NVSMs being mostly under threat in Serbia and BiH. On the last day, participants discussed the shared vision and next steps/action plan to further build the E&E ROC process and outcomes for 2024-2025, while identifying gaps in representation and diversity of the ROC process and mapping additional potential participants.
Overall the first E&E ROC’s convening meeting enabled the fostering of initial connections, relationship building, and trust between participants, stressing the importance and impact of regional support and solidarity. The ROC will continue meeting over the year (online and in person) to achieve its purpose of consultation, information flow, and agenda setting for Powered by the People, while creating further opportunities for participants to network and exchange with colleagues in their region and beyond.