Volt There Monthly
🇲🇪 Fact Finding Mission: Montenegro
🏛️ Echo-ing: E-learning Platform Launch
🇸🇰 General Assembly: Bratislava
💡 Your Thoughts
Dear reader, welcome back to the VoltThere newsletter, where we will share progress from our projects, developments with our partners, and milestones from our training platform, ECHO. Through this newsletter, we aim to keep you informed and connected across Europe and beyond. This newsletter also aims to hear from you: your thoughts, experiences and projects!
– Jason Halbgewachs, Secretary
Fact Finding Mission: Montenegro
During our Fact-Finding Mission to Montenegro, we met with a wide range of civil society organisations, political actors, EU representatives, and local stakeholders to better understand the country’s political and societal landscape and explore opportunities for future collaboration.
Our FFM
What stood out most was the contrast between strong public support for EU integration and the reality described on the ground: concerns about political corruption, declining trust in institutions, and significant Serbian political and media influence shaping the environment. While civil society was consistently described as active, critical, and essential, challenges such as youth disengagement and brain drain remain pressing. Still, despite these tensions, EU membership continues to be seen by many as Montenegro’s most promising path toward long-term stability and democratic progress.
ECHO-ing: E-learning Platform Launch
Our e-learning platform, ECHO, is launching this month! ECHO stands for ‘Empowering Citizens, Helping Organisations’. As the name suggests, the platform is built for citizens and organisations that want to strengthen democracy in their community. After blood, sweat, and tears, as well as many smiles, we are very happy to announce that we will be launching our e-learning platform this June!
The ECHO Platform
The platform has all the main criteria we were looking for: open source, European, and secure. And most of all, the platform would add value to what is already happening in our democracy field.
We are super excited for you to be able to be part of it. Let us know, by replying to this email, what kind of topics you would want us to dive into or if you want to work together on building a course.
Volt General Assembly: Bratislava
On the weekend of 13-14 June, our political party Volt Europa will hold their General Assembly (GA) in Bratislava, Slovakia. Members from all over Europe join this weekend to come together to talk with and inspire each other. As a sister foundation of Volt Nederland, we are obviously going as well!
Panel
During the GA formal elements will take place like voting for our new Volt Europa Board. A crucial moment in any organisation.
Next to this, breakout sessions are organised on different specific topics, such as Media Freedom or on topics related more to the organisation, such as campaign building.
We as Volt There will have our own market stall, so (new) members can come look us up and ask any questions they might have. If you are there, we would love to talk with you!
Your Thoughts
Which course do you think we will launch as our first course?