One of our annual fall events is the Josh Rosenthal Education Fund lecture. This lecture series honors Josh Rosenthal, a University of Michigan alumnus who died in the 9/11 attacks. The Rosenthal Fund supports lectures, special seminars, student research, internships and other programs, encouraging new and deeper understandings of international issues. You can learn more about this series here: http://fordschool.umich.edu/events/named-events

A current MPP student, Hannah Bauman, offers her review of this year’s lecture “The depth of our divisions, the breadth of our communities,” by Nadina Christopoulou

“We anthropologists are obsessed with arrival scenes,” Nadina Christopoulou states matter-of-factly as she attempts to describe to the audience what it is like to enter the worn,19th century building that houses the Melissa Network, the organization for migrant and refugee women in Greece that she co-founded in 2014. It’s a difficult task to explain to the people sitting in the large Ford School auditorium how welcoming the honeyed smell of Tunisian desserts, the laughter of women, and the gleeful patter of children’s feet halfway across the world felt to me when I visited in February, but I had a feeling that warmth was due mostly to the woman standing in front of us now.

Nadina Christopoulou is a remarkable person–as co-founder of the Melissa Network she runs what is essentially a community center for migrant and refugee women from, at her last count, over 45 countries ranging from the Philippines to Afghanistan. Located in the heart of Athens in a neighborhood wavering on the edge of becoming a stronghold for the alt-right, the Melissa Network educates, empowers, and heals the scores of women who walk through its doors in an attempt to address what is quickly becoming one of the biggest policy questions in the world today–how to address the very real human consequences of globalization and the migratory patterns that go with it?

Athens’ location has always predisposed the historic city to be at the center of various human drama–political, social, economic–and no more so than during the waves of refugees that started coming in 2014 and haven’t stopped since. You probably saw the headlines flash across your phone, maybe you even read a story about the people propelled out of their country by war and destruction and pulled toward the Western world by the promise of jobs and better lives for their children, but it is unlikely that any of that information truly hit you in the way that it hit Athens, or Nadina. In tandem with women leaders from various immigrant communities, she founded the Melissa Network as a safe haven from women fleeing violence, political instability, or simply seeking better opportunities.

And it is truly an amazing place–filled with art classes, language lessons, coding workshops, yoga sessions, and the buzz of activity brought by the women and their children who walk through its doors. Having visited the Melissa Network in Athens as part of the Ford School International Economic Development Program in the winter of 2017, I can speak to the life-changing work that happens there. Oftentimes, as policymakers, it is easy to throw out buzzwords like “asset-based thinking” or “community-based development,” but Melissa is the rare organization that actually practices what it preaches and that places people at the center of their work. Melissa demonstrates the inherent worth of all humanity in practice by flipping the narrative of the broken refugee to one where the women who enter are treated as wells of information and skills that they can share within this new sisterhood. The Melissa Network is a bridge to an integrated society for these women from disparate lands and different backgrounds because it capitalizes on the inherent strengths of its members by seeing women as multipliers. “This is what women do,” Nadina says, “They turn the uninhabitable into a home.”

In this way, the Melissa Network is a feminist critique of current refugee policy. Even the name of the organization itself–Melissa–invokes this idea. The Greek word for honeybee, Melissa is a nod to the industriousness and commitment to community that marks those insects led by their queen. The women who make up the Melissa network are not bystanders waiting for aid to be delivered but people actively working for a better future. Through their involvement in the network they create life opportunities for themselves and then bring that back to their own communities, spreading their impact across countries, even continents, much as bees are known to pollinate flowers miles from their own hives.

This is what rests as the center of policymaking–people. Before we think about policymaking we need to think about community building. As Nadina said, “When policymaking becomes a remote practice, by the time it gets implemented it is already irrelevant.” Her work through the Melissa network is a testament to how in a place where policies failed, humanity stepped up. As Nadina said in her talk, “Today’s refugees are tomorrow’s neighbors.”