Those were as many complex and bold questions that were raised during an inspiring and rich conversation held at the Stockholm Mosque on the occasion of the 2025 Ecumenical Week.
Honoured to sit there with Professor Azza Karam, Archbishop Emeritas Antje Jackelén, and Rabbi David Lazar, and moderator Javeria Rizvi Kabani, AWoN’s Network Director Rikko Voorberg insisted on the importance of radical hospitality and solidarity that are at the core of AWoN’s mission. Starting from his own experience as a migration practitioner, he shared how he had learnt, throughout the years, ‘to show up empty-handed’. For ‘It’s not the helping (essential as it may be) that transforms the inhumanity caused by Europe’s migration system. It’s the time spent as a guest of people on the move, joining for dinner, for coffee, exchanging stories of family and of home.’
This approach is labelled within AWoN as accompaniment. It acknowledges our helplessness on both sides of the fence. Europeans are complicit in a system they don’t agree with, people on the move are suffering from that system.
At AWoN, Rikko went on, we believe in unexpected partnerships: ‘we don’t do interfaith dialogue for the sake of dialogue or out of interest of religion, but we deeply believe that the diversity we envision should be in the core of our organisation, both with different faiths, genders, lived migration experience and age. To work together from identities that are used in conflicts to separate, opens up a new vision of a future.’
In this mission, the singularity of the network is to invest in the helpers. ‘The amazing vision of the founders of AWoN (Church of Sweden, Islamic Relief, HIAS as organisations and former Archbishop Antje Jackelén as the great visionary together with Anna Hjälm and Dirk Ficca and many others) was to create an ecosystem, a community of practice connecting the ‘helpers’ – isolated, overburdened, impactful migration practitioners throughout Europe. Now in 2025 we know how prophetic this vision was, the challenges for people working in the field (and thus for people on the move themselves) are incredible.’
Standing together to create brave spaces and circles of trust, practitioners rise up to the occasion when governments refuse to take care of basic human rights of a community. ‘Many who have been in this field know that trust between different actors is not easy to accomplish. At AWoN we always value People over projects. We invest in the person, regardless of the projects for which support is often lacking. People invest in each other, peer-to-peer – they cheer on, support in times of need, and are connected professionally and personally.’ Heart by heart, AWoN is expanding, from only a European network to national circles connected to the European network.
This community for all European Migration Practitioners that we envision, is the beginning and beating heart of our world of neighbours.
Deep thanks again to all the participants, speakers and audience members, which made this gathering a remarkable moment in the building of our world of neighbours.