"When we see what's happening elsewhere in the world, we realise we need to organise and mobilise even more to build a future all together"
I found the Forum to be really interesting because we got to meet people from a wide range of backgrounds, who live in very different contexts and who put forward different ideas. Being here together is like the start line, we now need to go on and build something together, a new era for Emmaus International, one where we work more closely alongside other movements.
At the Forum I truly understood what the people living in Africa, Latin America and other European countries are going through. I learnt about things I didn’t know about before. I came to understand their situations and that has had an impact on me.I did speak mostly with the Spanish-speaking participants: with Chileans, Peruvians and with Brazilians too.Two of us came here from the Pamplona community.
Before we left Iker and I promised that we would tell the companions at the community all about the Forum but it will be difficult to help them understand what really made this a great event (the workshop sessions the cultural events, etc)! We felt a lot of emotion this week and we’ll do our best to help pass these emotions on to the companions in Pamplona.When Emmaus International sends us the written summary of the workshop discussions it will help us to better explain the content of the debates to the people in the community...
We spoke on behalf of the Pamplona Community at the workshop session on ‘Emmaus' model of reuse and recycling: promoting access to rights and dignity of the most excluded by working together, while fighting a production-driven and unfair system’.I also chose to attend the session on ‘Citizen Mobilisation to Defend Migration Policies rooted in an ethos of welcoming others and respecting rights’ because we have been working for many years to help migrants in Pamplona.My 3rd choice was the workshop called ‘Right to Water: Citizen Mobilisation to Defend this Common Good’.
We all agreed to defend the idea that water is a universal common good that should be accessible to all.The Forum will help me in my daily work because I now have a clearer idea of what's going on in the world. In Europe, we're very much focused on our own lives, but when we see what's happening elsewhere in the world, we realise we need to organise and mobilise even more to build a future all together.
This Forum has helped us realise that Emmaus International has networks worldwide and that we must keep forging ahead!
Geneva, on 20 september 2018
