Marina Tota is ECON Executive Director responsible for leading strategic organizational development and network building. She is an organiser, activist, educator and researcher who believes in people’s power to create a just and regenerative society.

She has a background in psychology and education and about 10 years’ international experience in coordinating transformative trainings, campaigns and projects with civil society groups, organisations and movements for social and environmental justice. Originally from Italy, she has lived and worked most of her life in “in between” spaces, communities, countries, and cultures. She worked with Actionaid’s Global Platforms in Africa, Asia and Central America and Europe coordinating political trainings, participatory research, and developing the capacity of activists, organisers, volunteers, to lead organizing campaigns for climate justice, gender justice, and human rights. She contributed to the establishment of networks of activists and artists such as Activista Ghana and the African Creative Action Network.

She is committed to build relationships and intersectional solidarity for grassroots-driven systemic change.

Steve Hughes is ECON’s Strategic Advisor and former Coordinator. Steve has 20 years of experience working as a community, union, and political  organizer in both the United States and Europe. He has managed numerous multi-faceted projects and project teams, and comes to ECON with the recent experience of building a grassroots organization from a relatively low level into an increasingly sophisticated operation through a strategic focus on board development, fundraising, and building of organizational infrastructure. Immediately prior to coming to ECON he coordinated the planning and execution of the Citizen Participation University for the last two years, and his recent work has largely centered on education and training, with a goal of developing deep leadership and increasing capacity in the organizing sector in both Europe and the United States. Originally from the United States, he has strong connections to several of the community organizing networks there, and has a particular interest in fostering ever deeper levels of exchange between the organizing sectors in both places.

Masha is ECON Programme coordinator, a social movement organizer and educator with 15 years’ experience developing campaigns and teams committed to driving progressive change. Bridge-builder with a history of facilitating teams to build power and devise creative solutions for big problems on both sides of the Atlantic. She coordinates ECON programmes and in particular “Organizing Frontline Communities for a Just Transition”.

Maroš Chmelík is the Executive Director of the Centrum komunitného organizovania (Center on Community Organizing) in Slovakia (www.cko.sk). He has seven years’ experience in the field. One of his favourite experiences connected to his work is in 2017, when Maros participated in an initiative to defeat an unpopular, far-right governor of the Banska Bystrica region. Maros was able to lead different campaigns, events, and marches against the politicians intolerance and hate, leading to the politician being defeated handily in the next election. Maros finds this to be so important because it showed that community-based action and organizing can be incredibly effective and powerful.
Maros believes that organizing is a way for people to realize their own role in big decisions and utilize their power together to influence positive change. It can also be a way for people to express their own dignity. Organizing can also help people feel that they matter and that their voices are being heard and respected. For Maros, ECON is and will continue to be a hub where a diverse set of groups can come together to exchange knowledge, expertise, and ideas. Maros also believes that ECON can shift and adjust to constantly be best meeting the needs of member organizations and community organizing in the region as a whole. Maros wants ECON to build its current capacity and increase its’ notoreity and visibility in the region.

Bernadett Sebály is a former organizer and early-stage researcher supporting the organizing sector in Europe for years. Her organizing is rooted in a grassroots housing organization of homeless people and low-income tenants and a one-year professional development program in the U.S. with Virginia Organizing. Drawing on this experience, she played a leadership role in building the first Hungarian community organizing program with the Civil College Foundation, where she was a mentor and trainer. She contributed to laying down the theoretical foundations of the practice in Hungary by co-editing a book about the fundamentals of organizing. In addition, she coordinated Civilizáció, a Hungarian network of CSOs, during a period of repressive government measures. Since she started my PhD program, she has contributed to strengthening the organizing sector in an expert capacity. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between movement structures and policy impact. She is particularly interested in how the combination of movement strategies, one of them is organizing, influences outcome. She is currently a Visiting Graduate Scholar at the P3 Lab at SNF Agora at Johns Hopkins University, a lab specializing in analyzing organizing processes.

She been around ECON since 2014. In the first four years, she contributed to strengthening the organizing sector through her work at the Civil College Foundation. In 2018, she went back to academia and, from then on, supported ECON as an expert. Recently, she led a two-year participatory action research process with five organizers from five countries in Eastern Europe. They documented and analyzed their organizing strategy and contributed to creating the organizing history of the region. In the last few years, she acquired relevant knowledge and analytical skills that she could use to benefit ECON and the future of organizing. Her unique position as a longtime organizer (2009-2018) and a researcher (2018- ) enables her to bring new perspectives and knowledge relevant to organizers.

Sasha Josette is has 20 years’ experience in campaign communications and community organising with a focus on building organising practises and effective communications strategies around the climate crisis. This includes; participatory policy, community wealth building, political and organising strategies to challenge the rise of ecofascism, and political education embedded in a practise of collective care. Her work is rooted in working class communities closest to the pain of the climate crisis, (for example, ex-mining towns, towns with declining high streets, and towns with high rates of unemployment and poverty).

She is Director and co-founder of Breathe: community organising for climate justice,  co-founder and board member of the World Transformed Festival; co-founder of The Political Education Project; manager of national digital community organising team of The Labour Party Community Organising Unit (including 2019 general elections); she worked for 20 years in campaign communications consultancy with a range of organisations including on violence against women, policy and research, sex worker and addiction, independent  news and progressive campaigns for political representatives and elections.

Organising is in her bones. She sees the urgency and mobilising culture of the movement exhausting our people and our organisations. She knows it is not sustainable. She knows the solutions required are to build deep relationships with communities closest to the pain to the crisis; prioritise leadership development; create organising strategies to counter the rise of ecofascism; and embed a culture of collective care in our organising methodology and political strategy. All of this is why she co-founded Breathe: community organising for climate justice. She believes that when our local strategies for change are connected and aligned to our international partners like ECON we can win change for our people, communities and planet.

Ildikó Bárányi is a Member of the Civil College Foundation in Hungary and Member of the Supervisory Board of the Chance Lab (Hungarian Anti-Poverty Network). She has three years experience in the field and has a background in the business world. Ildikó decided to give her extra time and energy volunteering in Hungarian communities. Initially, she got involved in her own neighborhood to help those closest to her to improve their living situations. Soon after she felt the call to do something bigger and began volunteering with the Hungarian Anti-Poverty Network where she met a former member of the ECON board who introduced her to the organization.  One of her favorite experiences connects to her time volunteering with the Hungarian Anti-Poverty Network, an arm of the European Anti-Poverty Network that pushes Hungarian government to provide more support for families who are experiencing poverty. In October 2017, the organization held a week filled with events that were related to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. These engaging and educational events, including one which hosted a panel of experts, were able to bring in media attention that spread across to other communities and increase awareness about the issue.

To Ildikó, organizing means bringing people together who share common values to work on the expressed needs of a community and to support one another. After bringing a group together, they must go out to local events and ask people what problems they are facing. A common fear for new organizers is first approaching residents but Ildikó urges them to meet the people where they are and not to be afraid to talk to others.  After attending training events, including serving as a participant in the European Community Organizing School, Ildikó became a member of ECON’s fundraising committee and had helped with projects aimed at bringing attention and funding to the network and its members. The work members of ECON do is very important to her because it strives to get to the root of systematic issues through changing the long-term instead of serving as a band-aid that only briefly addresses problems. Stemming from her work on the fundraising committee, Ildikó would like to see ECON’s communications grow so it can aid the organization in expanding its fundraising efforts. She also benefited from the international trainings and would like to increase and strengthen those opportunities for the members of the network. While she is Hungarian, Ildikó first and foremost identifies as a European and is awestruck by this colorful and creative region and hopes her work with ECON can help unite it.

Éva Tőkei is a member of the Freie Ungarische Botschaft (FUB) in Germany.  She believes the most alarming global trend is right wing populism and nationalism and the defense mechanism against them needs to be strengthened everywhere. Both her birthplace Hungary, and her chosen home Berlin, are exposed to numerous conflicts originating in history. After being part of activism for some time she would like to contribute to advising other groups as well as bringing them together as much as possible.

She believed that in Hungary the situation is outright alarming with civil society being extremely weak and the people ruling it being so well organized and efficient that they get away with practically anything. Her chosen new home Berlin is flooded with a variety of issues and civilian attempts to solve them that experience gathered there could be utilized elsewhere. The two most recent successful campaigns she participated in were the report Hungary Turns its Back to Europe by the Hungarian Network of Academics and a round table discussion  organized by Freie Ungarische Botschaft and the Berliner Ensemble.