The seminar was an occasion to launch the FEANTSA Participation Toolkit and to share good practices as well as challenges to building participation of people affected by homelessness. Five organisation members of FEANTSA from Romania (Casa Ioana), Ireland (Galway Simon Community), Finland (No Fixed Abode), Spain (Arrels Fundacio) and UK (Glasgow Homeless Network) shared their initiatives and the positive and challenging aspects that these entail.
EAPN spoke about the vision of participation as an empowerment tool for people with direct experience of poverty to grow into champions of anti-poverty policies, being involved in running organisations, in advocacy and policy-making, communicating with media, doing research and ultimately having a stronger voice in fighting for more participative and democratic Europe.
The European Meetings of People Experiencing Poverty and Social Exclusion were presented as a model of participation-building which connected the national and EU policy-making cycles and which encouraged organisations and decision-makers to initiate similar processes in national anti-poverty work. EAPN also reaffirmed the intention to call for EU political commitment and adequate financial support to future EU Meetings of People Experiencing Poverty and will work with its member organisations, including with FEANTSA, to achieving that goal.
