Because no one can best describe what AWoN is, means and feels like but Practitioners themselves, here is a selection of the reflections some of us shared as we returned home after AWoN’s 2025 Annual Summit in the east of Poland.
Anna Alboth, Journalist and activist, Minority Rights Group – Grupa Granica, Germany-Poland
‘There’s a circle of people where I feel completely at home. Even if many come from religious backgrounds, no one cares who is an imam, a rabbi, a priest, a pastor, a refugee – or simply Anna – when you’re talking or dancing around the fire. It might sound a little kitschy, a touch fairy-tale, but although I’m part of dozens of networks working on migration in Europe, I never feel I belong (and grow) more than when I’m among these people. I don’t mind praying, they don’t mind when I don’t. We talk. We listen. We stay curious and open.
I feel privileged to serve on the advisory board of A World of Neighbours and, from time to time, to wrestle with the dilemmas of multifaith life and activism: the conflicts, the trauma, the resistance. We work together often, but meet only once a year – this time we gathered along the Polish–Belarusian border. You can imagine what that meant to me.’
Testimony by Anna Alboth, picture by Pedro Amaro Santos