Team
Jana is Grassroots Education Manager at European Alternatives, working within the School of Transnational Organizing. She is dedicated to creating transformative learning spaces and building capacity to collaboratively strategize for system change.
With a background in education, she has a passion for critical and experiential pedagogy and research interest in how social movements learn and engage in counter-hegemonic knowledge production. As a social and climate justice organizer and activist she has experience and a wide network across the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the UK, and Germany.
Most recently, she coordinated the programme of the People’s Summit for Climate Justice in Glasgow. Working with the COP26 Coalition, she draws on capacity organizing with a wide range of civil society groups, ranging from environment and development NGOs, to grassroots community campaigns, youth groups, indigenous groups, and migrant and racial justice networks.
Outside of EA, Jana is a Berlin-based grassroots organizer and activist, steadily pushing towards new imaginaries and strategic wins by the people.
I’m an activist and researcher from Chile. I moved to Germany in 2019 to pursue a Master’s in Global Studies. Since 2020, I have been actively involved in the migrant labor struggle in Berlin, particularly in the organisation of delivery riders with the Gorillas Workers’ Collective and its network, as well as in the construction of transectorial alliance between labor, housing and climate activists through the Make Amazon Pay campaign.
Alongside European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub and the School of Transnational Organizing, I also work as a research assistant at the Humboldt University Institute of European Ethnology together with the Berlin Institute for Migration and Integration Research. My personal research is currently focused on the role of care practices in enabling intersectional solidarity building within organised spaces of resistance. I believe the most important task at hand in political organising is forging organisational cultures capable of attending to the complex diversity of our human needs, so as to allow us to pool our capacities together in more effective and sustainable ways.
Gabriela was an intern at the Berlin Hub of European Alternatives, working on the School of Transnational Organizing‘s education and training programs for migrant workers, East German & Eastern European activists, as well as youth activists and campaigners from across Europe.
She has almost ten years of experience in direct legal services, community organising, and policy work with refugee and immigrant communities, both in Lebanon and the US. Gabriela worked in the US as a movement lawyer, representing low-income undocumented individuals, first in their immigration cases and later on employment and labour matters. She also worked on designing and implementing benefits and policies to support low-income immigrants in New York State. She is currently completing a master’s programme through the Global Labour University on Labour Policies and Globalisation.
Since April 2023, Gabriela has transitioned into her new role as Grassroots Community Manager building, holding, and caring for our community and network in Berlin and across Europe.
Our Board
Louna Sbou (she/they) is a cultural entrepreneur, changemaker and community-builder, educated in Law and Cultural Entrepreneurship in Germany and the UK. As a queer Amazigh Muslim, her lived experiences shape a non-Western approach to collective-making, research and resilient leadership. They curated global festivals, lectured internationally and collaborated with visionary artists. Louna employs artistic and cultural research and production to cultivate intersectional justice through decolonial, queer*feminist and class-critical perspectives. As co-founder and director of Oyoun in Berlin and chairperson of European Alternatives she fosters critical debate, experimentation and transnational solidarity, challenging hegemonic structures and reimagining leadership.
Louna Sbou is director of Oyoun, the antidisciplinary arts centre in Berlin-Neukölln centering queer-feminist, decolonial and class-critical perspectives. Her lived experience as a queer Muslim and first generation immigrant led to an unconventional journey exploring contemporary curatorship and non-Western approaches to collective making. Louna curated numerous exhibitions, performances and festivals incl. Un:Imaginable (2022/23) in Rwanda and Bosnia with Hope Azeda, Moudjahidate* (2022) with Nadja Makhlouf, Maya Inés Touam and Sarah El Hamed, and Backbone (2021) with Mazen Khaddaj. She was director of be’kech in Germany (2016-20), independent curator in Japan (2016-19) and program director at Station in Lebanon (2013-15).
Louna takes no bullshit though afraid of heights, a mother of two and vegan since 1991.
Jotham is a Senior Associate at Reos Partners and a freelance facilitator and consultant dedicated to helping people and initiatives work better together for more meaningful impact.
With over 15 years of experience in civil society, arts and culture, education, democracy, climate, and health across Europe, West Asia, and North Africa, Jotham specializes in impactful collaborations and organizational transformation. He aims to support diverse voices by connecting NGOs, funders, institutions, and networks.
Jotham was chief enabling officer at zusa gGmbH, and managing director at MitOst e.V. in Berlin. He holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Amsterdam, where his thesis explored the complexities of exporting democracy. Jotham enjoys a privileged life with his family in Leipzig, Germany.
Former Team Members
Gabriela Ortiz holds a law degree from the Universidad Catolica in Peru and a Master’s degree in Labor Policies and Globalization from the Global Labour University in Berlin, specializing in labor law, decent work, migration, gender equality and diversity. She wrote her Master's thesis on the issue of transnational mobility of domestic workers using a legal and intersectional approach.
Gabriela joined European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub in June 2023. Prior to that, she gained experience in union organizing, mapping strategies and tools for Spanish-speaking migrant domestic workers in Washington D.C. She also had a short but enriching internship experience in Brussels conducting lobbying and labor relations research.
In addition to her job as Berlin Hub Coordinator of the School of Transnational Organizing, Gabriela is working on a voluntary basis on the creation and growth of the grassroots organizing community "Workers Center Berlin" to connect and support different workers' struggles and build power.
Martin was the Network Manager of European Alternatives for five years until 2020. In the last years he became a French baker. In the Berlin Hub he was in charge of the development of the transnational community and network of the organisation.
Martin has been working in the non-profit sector for more than eight years with experience in membership development, communications and fundraising in international organisations such as IFOAM – Organics International and Oxfam France. He is also engaged as a member of SOS Méditerranée, a civic European organisation for the rescue of people in distress in the Mediterranean and of MitOst, an international network of cultural actors and active citizens. He has a strong interest on how activists and civil society organisations are articulating and organising themselves to influence European politics both at the grassroots and at the institutional level.
Since April 2023, Martin is supporting the team again as Berlin Hub Finances & Administration Assistant.
Georg Blokus, born in 1987 near the Polish Solidarnosc city of Gdansk, was the Director of European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub, which primarily runs the School of Transnational Organizing – a grassroots school for political activists, civil society organisations, labor organizers, political artists, migrant communities, and social movements seeking for skills and tools to build the next generation of movements and organisations.
He is a psychologist by training and has been working for several years as a transformative organizer, documentary theatermaker, movement educator, and political strategist with progressive pioneers and organisations. Because of his own family history, his focus is on organizing workers, migrants, and feminists on the frontlines to build solidarity and fight for their rights beyond borders.
Before joining European Alternatives in 2020, he worked as Artistic-Pedagogical Director of the Academy of the Arts of the World/Cologne from 2014 to 2016, and initiated the SCHOOL OF POLITICAL HOPE as a place for citizens, communities, and civil society actors seeking inspiration, empowerment, and support to overcome our shared feeling of political powerlessness and revive the lost art of organizing solidarity.
Daniel is a movement researcher and organizing trainer focused on the problem of workers’ organization, power, and strategy. He has participated in workplace, migrant, and housing struggles in the United States and Germany. Through the Werkstatt für Bewegungsbildung, he facilitates spaces where ordinary people can experiment with toolboxes that help them build rewarding, resilient, and politically effective organizations. As a co-host at Spadework podcast, he helps circulate organizing insight more broadly. He lives in Berlin.
Kasia Wojcik is project coordinator at European Alternatives since october 2021 as well as a dramaturg, curator and poet, working at the intersection of art and activism. She is part of the artists* collective "Staub zu Glitzer" and has worked with director Gesine Danckwart as well as for the Performing Arts Program of LAFT Berlin. She has been a progressive activist for transnational solidarity since 2016. Since 2017 she is part of International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM) by Milo Rau. As a dramaturg and curator she took part in "General Assembly", "The New Gospel" as well as "School of Resistance".