Dear friends of My Country Talks,

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2022. We hope this email finds you healthy and safe. This month, we bring you news our new My City Talks series rolling out in Germany and an exciting announcement of our next BIG project. 

But first, we would like express our solidarity with Ukraine during this unfolding crisis. We conducted two events in Ukraine in 2021 and planned another event to launch later this month. Obviously, this has been canceled given the current circumstances. If there is one thing we learned through our work there, it’s that Ukraine is a strong country full of peaceful people working together to build a bright and democratic future. We stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and echo the calls for a peaceful resolution to this senseless initiation of war.

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My City Talks

The Meine stadt spricht (My City Talks) series launched in Germany last year with Mannheim spricht and Marburg spricht. In 2022 and 2023, we will be rolling out the series to at least six more cities, including Chemnitz, Halle and Erlangen. Through a collaboration with the city administration and local news in each region, these events will help fight political polarization and engage residents in hyperlocal politics. 

The series is funded, in part, by the Demokratie Leben program from the Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend in Germany.

Check our Upcoming Programs for more information.

An announcement about Europe Talks 2022

We are pleased to announce that My Country Talks has received funding from the King Baudouin Foundation in Belgium for a new Europe Talks series in 2022. 

Europe Talks will look different this year - for the first time since 2019, we will be running a series of national programs instead of one cross-border event. Through funding from the King Baudouin Foundation, we will use these national events to develop deeper impact measurement tools and study the long-term effects of our dialogue format. 

Five events are planned throughout 2022, starting with Sweden Talks, Switzerland Talks and Poland Talks. 

To see if an event will happen in your country, keep an eye on our website.

MCT goes global

If you loved the Europe Talks cross-border program, don’t worry - it’s not going away. In fact, we are excited to announce our new program: The World Talks. 

In 2023, we want to connect tens of thousands of people from all over the world to discuss the issues that divide and unite us. Right now, the need for global understanding couldn’t be more urgent. 

And what better time to start than at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia next month. Project Lead Hanna Israel will be speaking on two panels, and we will also present our ideas for The World Talks. 

This is a crazy idea that, to our knowledge, has never been done before. That’s why we are building a steering committee to help us shape this new program. 

Will you also be in Perugia? Want to get involved or just say hi? Email Hanna or Sara.

Aid for Ukraine

There are a lot of resources circulating for how to help Ukrainains through donations, funds, and petitions. We definitely recommend you do some research on the organizations that are active in your country. If you are in Germany and still searching for a way to contribute, ZEIT Magazin has compiled this list of organizations (in German).