Dear members, partners, supporters and friends,
It has been over a year since our last newsletter, and that’s a very long time. During this time we have continued to collaborate with our civil society partners and to support those facing challenges, but we have also been busy remodelling our organisation. We have gone through quite a few internal changes, including a decrease in the size of our team, a reorganization and a shift in our management structure. It has taken us a while, but we are finally back and eager to reconnect with you, and share what has been happening with us, our partners, and the projects we run. The first thing we want to share with you is already old news, but at the same time still exciting for us—we have changed our name!
Renaming our organization
For some time, we have felt the need to rename our organization. Our story starts with a group of students who met in Berlin during the protests against falsified elections in Russia and the arrests of activists since December 2011. Later in 2012, they founded an NGO, which soon became Dekabristen e.V. Since 2015, we have been actively implementing projects and building relationships with different networks in Eastern Europe, the North and South Caucasus, and Northern and Central Asia. The diversity of our projects and team members grew throughout the years, and in recent years it became clear that the name Dekabristen does not reflect us, our regional focus and our translocal approach to collaboration.
February 2022, with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, marks a turning point for the work of our NGO. This culmination of Russia's aggression against Ukraine since 2014 has had a significant impact on our projects and partnerships and the way we work. Civil societies in the regions we work in now are navigating through multiple crises and challenges (more on this topic below). To continue fostering horizontal cooperation between and with the representatives of the civil societies of Eastern Europe, Central and Northern Asia, the North and South Caucasus and beyond, we have reworked our mission and renamed our association to Coopera e.V. in January 2024.
We would like to thank all the people we have met along the way for cooperating and exchanging with us, volunteering, and supporting us. Thank you for contributing to our association, projects, and mission. We have great memories of the last 13 years.
We hope to stay in contact and invite you to follow our activities in the future on our website coopera.io and encourage you to subscribe to our social media channels on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also reach us via our new email address: info@coopera.io.
A new board and management
We are pleased to share one of the positive and hopeful developments within our organization. In December 2024, the association’s members elected a new board consisting of three active members with diverse backgrounds who bring a wealth of experience and vision and are deeply engaged in civil society. Selbi Ataeva and Magdalena Patalong have joined the board as new members. With a three-person management team and a more horizontal management structure, we look forward to navigating the times ahead together!
Solidarity in crisis
Civil societies across Eastern Europe, Central & Northern Asia, and the Caucasus face intensifying pressures. Authoritarian regimes fuel conflict, violate rights, and shrink civic space through increased repression, targeting protests, activists, and NGOs with restrictive laws. “Anti-gender” agendas, forced migration, and climate change further destabilize the region and weaken civil society actors. Mass protests in Georgia against government repression exemplify this trend of tightening authoritarian control. Global instability, worsened by US policy shifts under Trump—including aid cuts and alignment with autocracies—weakens the NGO sector, increases risks for activists, and emboldens regional autocrats. Simultaneously, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has entered the fourth year, and its ongoing imperialism, hybrid warfare, and propaganda war threaten the independence of neighboring countries and demand urgent action against disinformation.
In these challenging times, our association stands in solidarity with civil society initiatives and activists who shape democracies, raise awareness and resist repression. More than ever, we strive to create opportunities and collaborate with activists and initiatives in the fields of urbanism, sustainability, media, (queer)feminism, antiracism, and political education. We cooperate with NGO and media workers, artists, and activists in exile and advocate for the interests of the civil societies of Eastern Europe, Central and Northern Asia, and the North and South Caucasus in Germany and the EU.
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Project highlights 2024
In 2024, our organization continued supporting civil society, activists, and grassroots in regions facing war, repression, and political instability.
Feminist Translocalities
Feminist Translocalities project supported feminist solidarity events in Ukraine, an anti-burnout residency in Armenia, a series of publications and podcast series on Russian colonialism in cooperation with the independent journal BEDA, launched a series of encounters that weaved histories and memories through cooking and storytelling in cooperation with Political Kitchen and Koopkultur e.V. At the end of the year, together with the Ukrainian Roma youth organization “ARCA” and the Polish organization “Foundation Towards Dialogue,” we organized a gathering for activists, researchers, and artists from Ukraine, Germany, and Poland interested in Roma cultures and fighting against anti-Roma racism.
Common Water Bodies
In September 2024, the Common Water Bodies summer school in Anaklia, Georgia, brought together researchers and artists to explore water as a shared resource in the northwestern Caucasus region of Svaneti, Samegrelo, and Abkhazia, which are connected and separated by the Enguri River. Using diverse techniques, participants created three carpets symbolizing the river, the delta, and Anaklia itself—each reflecting identity, transformation, and environmental interconnections.
SDG Lens
The final year of SDG LENS saw many activities that significantly strengthened the network of civil society actors in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus working towards implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Highlights included supporting partners’ participation in the UNECE Regional Forum on Sustainable Development in Geneva, contributions by the network members from South Caucasus to the UN’s High-Level Political Forum, presenting the Voluntary National Reviews on SDGs, supporting grassroots actions during the Global Week to Act, and organizing a major conference on sustainable development in Eastern Partnership countries in Vilnius, where a new roadmap for the network’s future activities was developed. The year ended with the publication of SDG shadow reports. The SDG LENS project deepened regional collaboration and bolstered the capacity of civil society actors to advance sustainable development goals. The project leaves behind a stronger, more connected network ready to tackle the challenges of sustainable development in the years ahead.
YouthLink
The YouthLink project focuses on European integration working in the field of non-formal civic education, providing a realistic picture of the EU and its challenges. In 2024, the project launched with a kick-off meeting in Tbilisi, and the team started developing an educational chatbot in Ukrainian and Georgian. Following the outbreak of the protests in Georgia, our partners organized activist meetings and mental health training in Tbilisi. This year, the project will host a media lab and a study trip to Berlin.
To conclude this long letter, we would like to express our gratitude to all of you—our partners, supporters, and friends—who continue to stand with us in these challenging times. Solidarity is key to our work, and we strive to spread solidarity as widely as possible. Throughout the years, we have strongly felt that solidarity from you. Looking ahead, we hope that 2025 will bring new opportunities for collaboration, even stronger connections, and energy to stay active in these uneasy times. We invite you to keep in touch, follow our latest updates and initiatives on our website coopera.io and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Until next time!
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