Blog

It’s so important to make the time to pause and take stock in our work. To give real importance to the space for reflection - on outcomes, achievements, challenges, questions, uncertainties, enjoyment, all that stuff - making sure we are staying alive to the core of our mission and doing our work in a way that aligns with our values. Along with the necessity of this in supporting effective evaluative and visioning processes, it’s also so important to take the time to absorb and celebrate the successes and positive outcomes of the work we’ve all been doing. Loads happened at Ulex this year! We thought we’d share a few of those highlights with you. Here goes…

Over the years of running Ulex - and for years before that in our sibling project Ecodharma - we have considered it necessary and important to carve out structured times and spaces throughout the year for evaluation, reflection and taking stock. We have done that in all kinds of ways, but always we have had a period in midwinter where we pause and spend some substantial time - two weeks or so - reviewing the previous year, revisiting vision and values, attending to relationships in the team and strategising for what’s coming.

In late 2021, we engaged activists involved with more than 100 organisations across Europe, to ask them about the key challenges their movements and organisations were facing. Most pointed to fragmentation, persistent divisions within and between movements, and a lack of movement capacity for longer-term and coherent strategy.

Creating the conditions for our teams and organisations to work well isn’t easy. Neus, who is part of Ulex’s Team Culture Circle, spoke to people from RadHR to hear what they are doing to help movement organisations develop effective and value based systems that can help.

Tens of thousands of refuge-seekers continue to die preventable deaths at sea, and in the absence of State support, volunteer solidarity networks are providing infrastructure and vital care. To support their work, Ulex recently teamed up with organisations working in Greece, Italy, and Spain to develop resources for enhancing psychosocial resilience in migrant solidarity activism. Lindsay Alderton speaks with one of the core team, Caoimhe Butterly, about finding hope amidst despair.

For the fourth year running the Ulex Project collaborated with Advaya and Gita Parihar to offer the Regenerative Activism conference, this time focussed on the theme of Building and Sustaining Our Movements.

For over a decade, Ulex trainers have been working on psycho-social resilience training for activists. In recent years we have been developing a curriculum aimed specifically at the LGBTQI+ community, alongside supporting social movements in Eastern & Central Europe.