Echoes from the Madrid Antenna (Spain)

The cheerful rhythm of the tam tam, the kikeleke and joyful songs announce a great event: the celebration of AEFJN's 25 years. This is why all parts of the Network: the Executive, the General Secretariat and the national Antennae are dressing up!

 

 

It's time to stop, acknowledge the road travelled and give thanks for it…… and then, well energized, to seek new ways forward in our work and commitment.

 

 

Africa and Europe are celebrating the sharing of life generated through relationships, work in common, shared desires and interests, mutual challenges and hopes... as we let the Gospel command "Rejoice!" (Lk 1: 26) resonate strongly in us.

 

 

In our Antenna we have spent time thinking what to organize and do to raise awareness of the network and its work and to help our society to discover Africa so that its voice is heard. We have chosen three events:

 

 

• A Roundtable where we invited Begoña Iñarra to speak to us about the Network and its work. Two other people will also take part, an African and a Spaniard. Both will help us to look at Africa in order to discover its challenges and hopes. For the second part of the morning we opted for the presence of three Africans: a Ugandan, a Congolese (from D.R. Congo) and a Mozambican. Each one will share his/her experience of one of the issues that our antenna works at: arms sales, food sovereignty and access to quality medicines. We would like them to tell us the path to take from here on.

 

• A series of Film fora. We will show four films from Africa and Europe. Each one intends to bring us a little closer to Africa, with its dreams, its complex reality, its values ​​and its crossroads.

 

• The closing day celebration where we want not only to celebrate but also pray and reflect together on how our faith relates to justice. As J. Calleja says "Without the most elementary justice towards the world's poorest, there is no Christian way to God".

 

• An article on AEFJN has just been published in a religious magazine.  Soon a new booklet on access to quality medicines will be published by the South Foundation (Fundación Sur).

 

We recognize our Madrid Antenna as only a small knot in the larger AEFJN Network, but it brings a difference, a plurality, and it is full of vitality and potential. We continue expanding our tent, with a certainty rooted in our experience and well expressed in the Bantu proverb "We're only human, through the humanity of others."

 

 

Itziar Alfaro

Coordinator AEFJN Madrid Antenna