Today the elections for the European Parliament begin. In this series you can read how green political youth parties from across Europe think about the future of the EU. Which topics are important to them, and how can young people make themselves heard? Today we speak to Julia Matser, chairwoman of DWARS. Connections with Brussels…
Tag: DWARS
The Shortcomings of Campaigning
Last weekend I spoke to a girl handing out flyers for GroenLinks (GreenLeft) in the city of Utrecht. She told me with genuine astonishment that there were people coming to the square, which was packed with campaigners, to get a sense of what the different parties stand for. To me it didn’t seem such a…
Looking Back at the Campaign
June 2016: there will be elections in nine months. DWARS’s freshly formed campaign team holds their first meeting. What are we going to do during the next three-quarter year and how? Before we started this, I had promised to bring a pie. ‘But,’ I said, ‘not without a reason. We need to have achieved something.’…
A Day in the Life of a Dutch Green Campaign Manager
Today Marije Ploeg has the floor. She is campaign manager at the GroenLinks (GreenLeft) department in The Hague. Before, she was the campaign manager in Arnhem, and she has been in the United States for a while and joined the BKB-academy to follow intensive courses about campaigning. She will tell us what she has learned…
Hitting the campaign trail with DWARS
It all began at the largest GA in the history of the Dutch Greens: one inspiring day which energized me intensely. And so, I offered my services to an enthusiastic volunteer, so as to actively contribute to the party campaign. By Skip Anker, a DWARS-member campaigning for the first time My first goal: go to…
Modern campaigning: Grassroots and apps
Let’s temporarily step away from the cynicism. Stop believing that people no longer take to the streets, or are unwilling to contribute through more than ‘clicktivism’; stop believing that time is long gone. Let’s blindly trust people DO want to roll up their sleeves and get to work. What kind of campaign would you set…
The Dutch Green Party campaign in the City of Leiden
At the start of this semester I decided to take a gap year due to certain circumstances. I wanted to spend my time by getting involved in the election campaign of the Dutch Green Party. In Leiden, the local campaigners were still looking for a second volunteering coordinator. I became coordinator on short notice, and…
The largest General Assembly in the history of the Dutch Greens
Over the past weekend, the annual General Assembly for the Dutch Green Party (‘GroenLinks’) took place in Utrecht (The Netherlands). Due to their new, immensely popular leader Jesse Klaver – as well as the general abysmal state of the world – the party has been growing for months. This causes unprecedented situations: 3000 attendees made…
DWARS update
Hi everybody, I am the new representative for European affairs of Dwars, the Dutch young greens. In this article I will describe what is happening in Dwars. First I will shortly explain how Dwars works, for those who have not heard of Dwars. Dwars has a national division and regional divisions. On local level people…
Campaigning in Eindhoven
While some of the active GroenLinks members gathered together in Amsterdam to celebrate the end of the EP election campaign, a small group of enthusiastic Greens were still campaigning in Eindhoven. Fortunately, the Sun seemed to be in a very positive mood too, which was good for the atmosphere. With three boxes filled with campaign…