Launch of the Shelter City Alumni Community

Dear Shelter City friends,

We are happy to announce that on the 8^th of April we launched the Shelter City Alumni Community.

The purpose of the Community is for Shelter City alumni to continue connecting, sharing and learning from one another, once they have returned to their home countries. The Community is hosted on a safe and secure Open Source online platform, and so far can accommodate alumni of Shelter Cities in the Netherlands, which makes a total of 115 human rights defenders from all around the globe. We hope that eventually alumni from all international Shelter Cities will be able to join the platform, creating even more connections within the human rights movement across the globe.

As it is a community for and by Shelter City alumni, their participation in setting up the platform has been fundamental. The Shelter City Alumni Community will host trainings, webinars and lectures by our staff, partners, external experts as well as alumni themselves. A Working Group composed of seven alumni, representing diverse genders, geographical regions, and working themes, plays a key role in mobilizing others to join in and keeping the community vibrant, creative and inspiring.

During the digital launch of the Shelter City Alumni Community, the participating alumni talked about the future of the platform. Among their wishes and expectations are capacity-building trainings, informal meetings and wellbeing sessions, exchanging resources and opportunities.

We hope that the new Shelter City Alumni Community will enable human rights defenders to strengthen their relationships and form new ones, in order to widen their networks of solidarity locally and globally.

Thank you for your support,

The Shelter City community