On May 1 – 3, the newly elected board and our current intern Alicia Tri Utamimet for an intensive meeting in Heidelberg and in the Palatinate, a region in Germany’s southwest. The purpose of this meeting was to establish good working relations in the team and to fix the general lines for the one year term ahead. We defined the involvement of more people in our activities and the development and implementation of a fund raising strategy based on four pillars (membership fees & donations, European funds, national funds and private funds) as the two core priorities. Our online tools need to be developed and our PR further improved.
While three of our programmes (Art Interventions, OpenFora, MyEurope) are being developed by the respective teams along the lines defined earlier, the board will actively contribute to the definition of a new approach for our training activities. We would like to avoid the impression that Citizens of Europe was a “closed shop” for a specific group of activists or friends; therefore the board decided to revitalise and upgrade the Citizens’ Weekends organised between 2004 and 2007. The participation of anybody interested in our work is more than welcome. Citizens’ Weekends will be organised twice a year. During these meetings the council and the official general assemblies will also take place. The next two Citizens’ Weekends are scheduled on 23-25 October 2009 in Brussels and on 19-21 March 2010 in Berlin.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested in participation or would like to get more information about our work.