- UPCOMING EVENTS -
Orientation meeting for trainers and mentors
📆 Thursday, February 12th 2026
🇺🇸 10 am Eastern / 9 am Central
🇪🇺 4 pm CET / 5 pm Eastern European
We are launching an exciting new program to build community organizing capacities in Central and Eastern Europe! Want to get involved as a trainer, facilitator, speaker or mentor? Please join us at this orientation meeting and see how you can contribute!
Note: All roles are voluntary.
Support group for freelancers
📆 Monday, February 16th 2026
🇺🇸 10 am Eastern / 9 am Central
🇪🇺 4 pm CET / 5 pm Eastern European
Hey, freelancers! Join us and talk to peers about the challenges and joys of freelancing. We set up the agenda together, but could share experience on useful tools, work-life balance, concentration tips, financial planning and more!
- FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN 2026 -
Thank you, donors!
Our endless and heart-felt gratitude to all 36 people who have responded to our call for action and have financially contributed to our fundraising campaign, supporting our network in 2026.
Your contribution will help us all remain connected and empowered to champion social and environmental justice in a critical period. We stay together in 2026!
Our list of fame:
You still can (and should) add your name to this list!
The Dave Beckwith Memorial Fund will allow us to stay together in 2026 and depending on the resources we manage to raise would:
Keep 500+ organizers connected and informed by operational channels, including website, newsletter, social media groups;
Organize virtual community events on topics of common interest;
Pilot affinity groups and communities of practice;
Launch peer-to-peer program for mentoring and community support;
Recruit and train a new cohort of organizers from Central and Eastern Europe;
Support trips between the US and Central and Eastern Europe, expanding impact in the sending and hosting communities.
- NEWS FROM THE PROGRAM -
We announced Virtual Fellowship 2026
While we are currently not in position to continue organising our professional exchange program with intercontinental trips like before, we are strongly determined to keep connecting justice fighters from both sides of the ocean and to keep building community organising capacities in Central and Eastern Europe. This is why we are launching a Virtual Fellowship program for new cohort of community leaders and we count on our alumni to spread it to people in their organisations or networks, who would benefit from it. We keep the focus on our five countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia), so we can integrate the new fellows in our existing alumni networks and keep the movement growing. Application deadline is February 20th, and there is an info session for potential candidates on February 5th.
Old domain, brand-new website
After being down for some months, our domain www.glc-teachdemocracy2.org is now working again and hosting a brand-new website. Apart from being visually renewed, the website now better reflects the new realities of our alumni community, while still serving as an archive to our history. You can already see all previous newsletter issues and some of our publications, while delegation newsletters from the last 15 years will be also gradually added.
The first line of the website reflects our renewed mission: We are a group of 450+ community organizers, civil activists and leaders, working tirelessly to advance social and environmental justice in Central and Eastern Europe, and the US. We provide networking, support and professional development opportunities for civil society and community leaders.
Cheers to new beginnings 2026
In the end of 2025, the GLC Alumni Advisory Board got together to review the years and gave a green light to the plans for 2026, which included relaunching the website, launching the Virtual Fellowship 2026 and more effort to enhance alumni engagement (stay tuned!).
We launched these plans with a celebratory toast on January 20th 2026. It was also a great opportunity to hear some positive news from across our community: while some start a new PhD program (Dilyana from Bulgaria), others have just finished their dissertation and will soon publish their book (Viviana from Romania); some got retired and are starting new endevaours (Kristen from the US), others reported that the disability group they worked with as a follow-up from the GLC Professional Fellows program, is now a registered organisation (Silvia from Romania).
As always, the best way to start a new year, new project or a new glass of wine, is in a community!
- DEMOCRACY IN ACTION -
Vote for our name!
We wanted to keep the abbreviation GLC, which is so dear to us all and well-known across our community: it is now part of our identity. Yet, its original Great Lakes Consortium meaning no longer makes total sense in the current situation. This is why we thought of a couple of alternative names and would like to know what do you think.
GLC stands for:
Global Learning Community
Global Learning for Local Change
Growing Local Communities
Grassroots Leaders for Change
- FUNDING POSSIBILITIES -
Call for Roma Projects within ROVA 2026 (EUROPE)
ERGO Network, together with 5 national partners, is launching new calls for proposals for Roma and pro-Roma civil society organisations across the EU.
Support is meant for organisations that promote EU values, strengthen Roma participation, and take a stand against antigypsyism.
Grants of up to €25,000 available for projects running from Sept 2026–Sept 2027. Priority given to Roma-led organisations.
National Grassroots Organizing Program (US)
The National Grassroots Organizing Program (NGO) of the Ben and Jerry Foundation seeks to provide support to community-based, grassroots organizations confronting social and environmental injustice. It offers unrestricted, general operating support grants of up to $30,000, with an average grant size of $20,000, to small (budgets under $350,000), constituent-led grassroots organizations throughout the United States and its territories. Deadlie is February 25th at 4:00 PM ET.
- BOOK RECOMMENDATION -
This month’s book recommendation is by our alumna Edita Bednarova (Slovakia). Make your own recommendation for the next issues!
Calling In is at once a handbook, a manifesto, and a memoir—because the power of Loretta Ross’s message comes from who she is and what she’s lived through. She’s a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists, and a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism. With stories from her five remarkable decades in activism, she vividly illustrates why calling people in—inviting them into conversation instead of conflict and focusing on your shared values over a desire for punishment—is the more strategic choice if you want to make real change. And she shows you how to do so, whether in the workplace, on a college campus, or in your living room.
- MEME OF THE MONTH -
Operations in the US are currently handled by The World Affairs Council of Northwest Ohio, acting as a fiscal agent and grant manager.
