‘I never feel I belong (and grow) more than when I’m among these people’

'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.'

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 GroupGrupa 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

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