Marina Tota Marina is an educator, organizer, activist, and researcher committed to building people power for a just and regenerative society. She has a background in psychology and education and about 15 years’ international experience in facilitating transformative learning and organizing processes with social movements, civil society groups, and international organisations. Originally from Italy, she has lived and worked across Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America designing, coordinating and facilitating trainings on organizing, artistic activism, campaigning, leadership, participatory action research, and more as part of Actionaid – Global Platforms. She coordinated, trained and coached activists, organisers, volunteers, to lead campaigns for climate justice, gender justice, human rights and Panafricanism. She has been leading the creation and development of national and international activist networks such as Activista Ghana, the African Creative Action Network. Currently, she is currently the Executive Director of the European Community Organizing Network (ECON). 

An has more than a decade of experience in facilitating and training groups working on social change. Her great sources of inspiration and educational beacons in doing so are Training for Change and Process Work, in which she followed more than 200 h of training. An is driven by passion for change. She is an empathetic creative who turns ideas into action. A deep understanding of group and power dynamics underpin a motivational and process-oriented approach in teams. As a facilitator, she remains committed to creating ‘brave spaces’ where people can fully express themselves. An’s political anchor points are feminism, anti-oppression work and ecology.

Steve Hughes has over 25 years experience organizing in the US and Europe. He lives in Prague and works on several trans-European and transatlantic organizing initiatives. Tracing his roots to the US labor movement, he transitioned to political organizing for the Working Families Party (WFP) in 2010. In 2014 he moved to Europe, but he continues organizing at the WFP and the Grassroots Power Project in the United States. In Europe, he has been playing a leading role in developing the European Community Organizing Network. In all these roles he serves as a link between the US and European organizing sectors.

Gorana is an educator and organizer from Serbia part of the training team of the European Community Organizing Network (ECON). She learned community organizing at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Executive Education course “Leadership, Organizing and Action” by Marshall Ganz. Since then, she has held over 30 community organizing trainings in various areas, such as climate justice, women rights, patients’ rights, and democracy. One of the campaigns in which she was part of was “Bravo za mame” (eng. Bravo for mums) which fought for the law amendment to allow all mothers regular maternity benefits in Serbia. She is also a trainer of the UNICEF UPSHIFT program, as well as member and organizing trainer with the Leading Change Network (LCN).

Masha is a social movement organizer and educator, originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, raised in the United States and now calls Berlin home. Over two decades, she’s organized fast food workers in the Fight for $15, youth for truth and reconciliation in the Balkans, transit riders in NYC, Berliners for refugee rights, and communities for global economic trade justice. Masha organizes the Just Transition campaign with the European Community Organizing Network (ECON) and supports the development of new organizing leadership with the Leading Change Network.
How do people find moral resources to build courage in the face of injustice? How do we create resilient structures of belonging that build our movement’s capacity? How do we build power to achieve our goals? Common conditions prevail, but these are the questions that she explores.

Neus has been passionate about education since she was 8 years old and went dumpster diving in teachers’ recycling bins for worksheets to help other students learn at break-time. She moved from Castellon to Scotland to study Community Education, with a focus on youth work and adult education, where she co-founded The New Leaf Co-op, a successful workers’ co-op in Edinburgh. Whilst there Neus developed her understanding of how productivity meets good working conditions meets overturning the food system meets resourcing the commons with resilient and democratically managed capital. This passion now underpins her project coordination role at Ulex.

Cori is an anarchist activist based in Catalonia. He started getting involved in radical social movements when he was a teenager. He is passionate about helping the community in topics such as housing welfare, squatting, neighbourhood mutual aid networks, and anti-oppression and queer-feminist movements. During the last years, he has been taking courses on group facilitation to increase his knowledge on human relationships and accompanying processes for both groups and participants. He is currently collaborating with Ulex as a course organiser and facilitator.

Alex has been fighting in the climate justice movement for many years with direct actions. He organized, mobilized and communicated many large protests against lignite mining in Germany as the Hambach Forest occupation or in the village of Luetzerath. Currently, he is building water alliances across Europe. With the kitchen collective Mobkit, he is cooking for action camps, protests and solidarity campaigns across Europe. He sees good, strengthening food and a visible and solidarity-based cooking and care structure as an essential part of transformative political work.

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ECON is a hub for the community organizing movement and supports organizers to build an effective counterbalance to the rise of right-wing extremism, racism, and nationalism in Europe.  ECON serves as a hub for the community organizing movement across Europe with a focus on developing the craft of organizing through training and mentorship, technical assistance, and by creating a space for organizers from different countries to collectively develop their strategic practice.