Two years as campaigns director

This is my farewell from theVoice platform after almost two years. My last email as campaigns director has been sent yesterday, I’m sharing an excerpt here.

“I had only a slight idea about the journey we started last January when I joined the small but enthusiastic team aHang. I was sure about one thing only: that the launch of the platform would mean a huge opportunity for activists, civil society and all of us who act for change in Hungary, to gather online and develop their activities: communication, organising and fundraising.

We founded the Voice in an era when despair and helplessness withheld masses from being active, with a phase of seemingly never-ending fights behind us. Supporters of democratic communities had to ask the same question over and over between 2014 and 2017: how can we make people see that society can only flourish when citizens actively participate? Today, I know the answer, as we’ve proven it with the aHang community, that each and every case we fight for, be it on a local or a national scale, is a step toward positive change.

I had to take a hard decision recently when I end working with the platform. I proud to have done so much for change, and it was the right place to learn about the current state of affairs in Hungary. I’ve encountered so many stories that it will take way more than two years to process.

This has been a peculiar phase for me that brought huge challenges and major results. As campaigns director I have coordinated the communication and the first steps of aHang, and managed campaigns in the first phase of the organisation’s life. Obstacles that seemed huge were followed by unquestinable successes.

Do you remember the home care campaign? We have changed the public discourse along the fight for caregivers with the NGO “Lépjünk, hogy Léphessenek” and the CSEVE group. I won’t forget the day when we first reached 50 000 signatures, and I was so proud to take home the banner we took at the demonstration in the Parliament last Autumn. [1]

The AVM group (The City is for All) partnered with aHang for campaigns to tackle the housing crisis. It had been almost ten years since I first witnessed a forced eviction, when I coordinated our successful campaign to provide housing for families in Budapest in 2018.

And what did the elections bring us? I am proud to have joined forces with the platform’s membership to show alternatives during elections for the society whose trust was severed in long years of political trench warfare in Hungary. Together with my colleague, Lajos Balogh, we organised the ‘Don’t sell your vote’ campaign, which was the first event series of aHang and the very first of its kind in Hungary, targeting Roma communities and addressing voter suppression at ten localities around the country, including segregated settlements.

In 2019 I was working on the “Move Europe” program, a voter mobilization campaign for the EUropean Elections, as part of the #YestoChange campaign, and aHang’s first international cooperation at that. Gergely Hajdú organised the Budapest local elections primaries this June; and this Autumn, shortly before being elected, I hosted Gergely Karácsony who answered questions of aHang members in a crowdcast. I very much hope he will keep his promise too regularly meet denizens online!

Thinking for a moment about my previous lines, I realize these are still mere fragments of the achievements of the last two years. More than 188 000 people joined the platform to sign a petition; we have started 40+ campaigns at aHang.hu; and we launched more than a year ago the szabad.ahang.hu website, where denizens can launch their own campaigns and go viral some of them reached 20 000+ signatures.

I am going to follow the platform’s activities, I will support their campaigns and be present at demonstrations for every cause that matters to me. As an aHang alumna I will support their work with regular donations. Keep up the good fight!

More to read in English:

[1] Home care in The Campaigns Library: https://thecampaignslibrary.com/resources/campaign-long-reads-home-care-in-hungary/