References

Young­UP! Com­munity Week­end – Cohort 3, Novem­ber 2024, Salt Labs Halle (Photo: Ronny Götter)

»The col­lab­or­a­tion with the facil­it­at­ors Georg Blok­us and Sujin J. Noël was extremely enrich­ing and has sus­tain­ably strengthened our three cohorts of par­ti­cipants in the all-round pro­gram. The know­ledge and skills were presen­ted in a prac­tic­al, meth­od­ic­ally var­ied and under­stand­able way so that it could be applied dir­ectly in action-ori­ented exer­cises. The empower­ing effect of the work­shop was par­tic­u­larly impress­ive and valu­able: The facil­it­at­ors man­aged to cre­ate an atmo­sphere of trust and open­ness that enabled the par­ti­cipants to gain new per­spect­ives, deep­en their know­ledge and con­fid­ently devel­op their stor­ies. Georg and Sujin’s abil­ity to adapt to dif­fer­ent group dynam­ics and cur­rent events also pro­moted an exchange at eye level.«

Melanie Torres & Katar­ina Medić

Pro­ject Leads, Young­up!

OMG! Migra­tion Launch Event Work­shop by Ber­lin Poly­phon, Novem­ber 2024, Volks­bühne Ber­lin (Photo: Alex­an­der Meyer)

»Georg and Sujin accom­pan­ied the found­ing of Ber­lin Poly­phon from the idea to the launch by provid­ing their rich expert­ise and exper­i­ence in strength­en­ing migrant self-organisations.The ini­ti­at­ive is a coali­tion of Ber­lin migrant self-organ­isa­tions that aims to shed a dif­fer­ent light on the migra­tion debate. After ini­tial con­sulta­tion with the respons­ible officer in the office of the Ber­lin Sen­ate Com­mis­sion­er for Par­ti­cip­a­tion, Integ­ra­tion and Migra­tion, Julia Port­nowa, and a coordin­at­ing group of lead­ers from Ber­lin MSOs, they sup­por­ted the mem­bers on their found­ing jour­ney in sev­er­al needs-ori­ented work­shops. The innov­at­ive com­munity organ­iz­ing meth­ods of the two polit­ic­al organ­isa­tion­al con­sult­ants were decis­ive for the con­cep­tu­al, stra­tegic and staff­ing ori­ent­a­tion in the found­ing phase and the pro­act­ive dis­cus­sion of the par­ti­cipants with their needs, wishes, goals, exper­i­ences and pos­sible prob­lems in the fur­ther course of the launch. As a res­ult, the future cre­ation of a code of con­duct was developed togeth­er, tak­ing into account aspects crit­ic­al of power and dis­crim­in­a­tion – an import­ant step in estab­lish­ing racism-sens­it­ive and sus­tain­able work­ing structures.«

KASIA WOJ­CIK & DAV­ID HÄUSSER

Coordin­a­tion Team, Ber­lin Polyphon

Ger­many-Wide Coali­tion Meet­ing “Pass(t) uns allen”, Novem­ber 2024, Berlin

»Sujin used the concept of ›brave space‹ to cre­ate a soul­ful space in which dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives were val­ued and the par­ti­cipants felt safe and respec­ted. Sujin’s empath­et­ic and struc­tured facil­it­a­tion made it pos­sible to address chal­len­ging top­ics and dis­cuss dif­fer­ences con­struct­ively. This was very well received by the par­ti­cipants and con­trib­uted sig­ni­fic­antly to an open and pro­duct­ive work­ing atmo­sphere. As a coali­tion of diverse (post)migrant and racism-crit­ic­al organ­isa­tions, we attach par­tic­u­lar import­ance to work­ing with people who know the real­it­ies of our mem­bers’ lives and fields of work and who sup­port us in a diversity-sens­it­ive, power-crit­ic­al and empower­ing way. Sujin brings all of this to the table and has made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to our coali­tion meet­ing, both in terms of con­tent and in bring­ing us closer togeth­er as coali­tion partners.«

Olga Ger­sten­ber­ger

Dir­ect­or, With Wings & Roots, & Cam­paign Coordin­at­or Pass(t) uns allen