Quiénes somos

Como eje colaborativo, el Proyecto Ulex está dirigido por el Col·lectiu Eco-Actiu, una asociación sin ánimo de lucro implicada en diseñar e impartir formaciones residenciales desde 2008. El Proyecto Ulex es una nueva iniciativa desarrollada sobre la base de esa experiencia.

Nuestra filosofía

La conectividad es clave para la vitalidad cognitiva y el aprendizaje. La diversidad es crucial para la resiliencia y la adaptabilidad cognitiva. Vivimos en una época en la que los desafíos sociales y ecológicos exigen un cambio: del individualismo atomizado a las redes de solidaridad. Este cambio implica una nueva colectividad que no deje de honrar la individualidad. Requiere cooperación equilibrada con autonomía. Ulex florece con la conectividad y aspira a convertirse en una referencia de la colaboración basada en valores.

Desde Ulex, trabajamos con numerosas personas y organizaciones para diseñar e impartir nuestro programa de formación. Establecemos asociaciones con organizaciones de toda Europa y a nivel internacional. Reunimos a diversos grupos e individuos en comunidades de aprendizaje. Apoyamos a organizaciones, grupos y personas para fomentar colaboraciones, construir redes, intercambiar experiencias y profundizar la resiliencia de los movimientos sociales a través de la creación de conexiones significativas.

Core Team

Alex

Location: UK

Alex has been designing and facilitating training, geared towards social and personal transformation, for almost a decade. They have been part of building long term programs for sustainable activism and psycho-social resilience which have informed Ulex’s work, and coordinated multiple international projects to support propagating this work throughout Europe. Their commitment to social justice and history of activism have involved them in direct action and affinity group work focused on climate justice, anti-capitalism, queer politics and gender identity. As part of the Ulex team, they are involved in project coordination, resource development and course facilitation.

G

Location: Catalunya

G has been involved in social movement organising and education since the late 1980’s. He is a highly regarded trainer and has designed several training programmes covering areas such as psychosocial resilience in activism, the ecology of social movements, socio-political organising and systems thinking, as well as wilderness immersion and nature connection work. He has developed a number of training for trainers programmes. He is known for highly innovative work blending pedagogical methodologies, which has inspired numerous training initiatives across Europe. He’s what you might call the Ulex Programme Director.  

Ella

Location: Catalunya

Ella brings 10 years’ experience working with not for profit organisations across diverse themes including: advocacy for migrant communities; local community engagement in national policy making; and structural relationships between poverty and disenfranchisement.  As Project Coordinator for Ulex since 2016 her work bridges facilitation, developing project partnerships, governance, strategy, and project and programme evaluation.  She has coordinated more than 30 partnerships with a range of different actors across European social movements.

Neus

Location: Catalunya

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.

Sheila

Location: Catalunya

Sheila joined the Ulex team in 2019. She supports partner organisations and is taking a lead role developing Ulex’s work building capacity for POC and migrant led activism. Prior to joining Ulex her activism was primarily focused in the UK around grassroots organizing, including the anti-fracking, anti-aviation and anti oil sponsorship movements.

Kat

Location: Catalunya

Kat’s social change practice started with zero waste grassroots initiatives in Russia, developing these into a regional project integrating citizens initiatives, local authorities, and international networks. Through the path of her own activist burnout journey Kat discovered how somatic practices, mindfulness and nature connection  could provide resilience and resourcing.  She brings this experience along with skills of international collaboration and municipal level organising to her role as project coordinator at Ulex.

Ilaj

Location: Catalunya

As a social activist and trainer, and a member of SPINA trainer’s for social change collective and European Action for Youth (EYFA) network, Ewe is project lead for Ulex’s LGBTQI+ psycho-social resilience and holistic security programme.  Ewe works with grassroots groups involved in social and environmental struggles, and also NGOs in the areas of social and environmental justice. As a WenDo trainer – a self defense and self assertiveness method for women and trans* people – they are passionate about working with body awareness as a radical means of deconstructing internalized systems of oppression. Ewe is a member of the Ulex core team.

Project Team Members

Sheila

Location: Brittany, France

Sheila has been involved in activism and campaigning for social change for about a decade, organising and facilitating with grassroots groups and NGOs, primarily in the UK climate movement. In the lead up to COP21, in 2015, she was part of forming a European network mobilising for grassroots action on climate justice. In more recent years she has been more focussed on developing anti-oppression training, to support the need for greater intersectional thinking in all movements in order to not recreate systemic racism and social inequality.  After a year working in the Ulex core team, Sheila is now leading a project to build capacity to support training for BIPoC activists, and to develop a Ulex training programme exclusively for BIPoC participants.

Lou Hemmerman

Location: L'Escala

Lou’s background in academia and sociological research supports her ongoing passion for  documenting and communicating Ulex’s extensive knowledge of burnout and trauma in the activist field. As a trainer and designer for Resourcing Resilience, Working with Trauma, Lou is currently training in somatic methods of working with trauma, tension, stress and overwhelm which she applies to her research work and embodiment practice.  In addition, Lou is currently the Ulex coordinator on an international project developing resources and training material for the newly emerging field of migrant solidarity resilience work.

Our Name

Ulex: Latin (argelaga Catalan, gorse English) noun:

1. A thorny-evergreen flowering shrub, with a high capacity for regeneration and resilience. Its seedpods open in contact with fire and it reshoots from charred stumps. A successionary plant that grows well under challenging conditions. It improves soil fertility through nitrogen fixing, preparing the way for renewed biodiversity.

2. A traditional choice for igniting fires. Burns hot and bright.

3. A networked project adding nutrition and fertility to European social movements through training and capacity building. It kindles the realisation of social justice, ecological intelligence, and cognitive vitality.

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