Riding on the success of the Forum of Democracy, Sustainability and Inter-religious Dialogue, ENIB Board Meeting took place on 22 September 2024 at the Gefyres Eirinis Office in Athens.

RfP national chapter representatives from Bulgaria, Spain, Finland, Germany, Albania, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK attended the hybrid Board Meeting, and the opportunity to report national agendas as well as results and achievements gave rise to the discussion on streamline efforts across boarders so while we achieve our national goals, how working together can bring tighter-knitted efforts towards an overall European mission.

Each national representative recounted the work in their country, and recognised the similarities in our challenges as well as the differences in our encounter in regions from the Mediterranean to the Nordic regions. Revisiting the need to work on the recently published strategy document, the meeting brought out the importance of cross-border communication between national bodies in order to maximise the effect of the RfP global priorities we all work towards.

New members to ENIB from Finland and Greece introduced their work on the ground with both clarity and conviction, and ENIB will now be looking forward to telling a not-often-visible story to promulgate the inter-religious dialogue in action. Recounting our toils and struggles as well as experiences of success gave members of ENIB a chance to formulate and fine-tune our approaches to national projects, always looking out for improvement that can benefit the bigger picture while realising the need to learn and work together.

The meeting identified areas of weakness and sketched out plans to address those issues, including reviving interest in the less active nations bodies, improving our corporate structure as well as discuss cross-Europe interfaith project possibilities. At the end of the meeting, the suggestion from the ENIB President Prof. Genti Kruja to meet in person at least once a year received universal approval. We do get so much more achieved when we have the chance to chat and discuss in between the lines and beyond fixed agenda items. As national chapters excel in different areas, putting our heads together would give chance to maximising support mechanisms and “out-of-the-box” suggestions which would improve our scope and work in the future. (prepared by Cinde Lee)