Newsflash / A Look Back at 2025

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December II 2025 - End of the Year Edition

One Photo, One Memory: A Personal Look Back at 2025

We are closing the year with a Newsflash that differs from the usual. In the sections below, the EFRJ Secretariat team looks back on 2025, sharing specific moments that are particularly characteristic for each staff member. 2025 held many defining moments for the organisation as we celebrated our quarter-century anniversary. We could report on many more important events and milestones beyond those presented here, but doing so would exceed the scope of this mailing. Instead, we have chosen to take a deliberately personal approach.

The rule was simple: everyone could choose one photo that evokes a noteworthy memory from the past year and write about what that image means to them. Join us on this mini time travel — reflecting on what each of us holds in a special place in our memories from 2025. Naturally, we have many more memories than these. And what about you? If you feel like it, please write to us! If you can pick a photo, we would love to receive that as well. We would be happy to include a selection of your shared memories in our upcoming comprehensive Annual Report!

Bálint Juhász: Genius Loci

Group photos hold a special place in my heart. Often, they best capture the shared experience that a group of people has gone through together — an experience through which the participants were forged into a community.
The Winter Academy, which we organised for the third time in early 2025 (and the fourth edition is coming up in less than two months!), was once again a special edition. It was wonderful to see participants from various countries — and even three continents — immersing themselves in two topics: the meaning of restorative justice in the context of prisons, and the methodology of restorative training facilitation.
The former course was an enhanced version of a previous, highly acclaimed '23 Summer School, while the latter was the result of extensive preparation by members of the Training Committee, with the aim of making high-quality training accessible to many.
As a European organisation, we strive to bring EFRJ events to ever-newer locations across Europe. The Winter Academy, however, is that moment of the year when we host the community in our own home — where we work — welcoming everyone who wishes to join and learn together. It is an intense week that lends a special depth to the city, and one that I fondly recall while walking the streets of Leuven later in the year.

Edit Törzs: Innovation and Creativity

The Annual General Meeting is the organisation’s most important decision-making platform and a unique opportunity to connect with members. For years, we have sought ways to make it more engaging, interactive, and enjoyable. While the new strategic plan was a central topic this year, we wanted to offer more than a traditional presentation.

Through creative ideas and strong team engagement, we introduced a completely new approach to organising the meeting in 2025, which took places in Athens. The programme included a quiz and debate theatre, featuring staged dilemmas drawn from challenges encountered during the strategy development process.

This format not only revealed new talents within the team, but also actively involved members in a lively and meaningful discussion of the issues presented. The venue (Myrtillo Café), a coffee bar run by a social rehabilitation project - provided the perfect setting for the event, where tradition met innovation and creativity.

Laura Hein: A Meaningful Year

2025 has been a meaningful year for me, marked by the realisation of two goals that I had carried in my mind and heart since I began working at the EFRJ. One of the greatest achievements of the year was the launch of the Manifesto for Restorative Justice and Human Rights, a document shaped through broad international collaboration. The Manifesto calls for embedding restorative justice within human rights frameworks, recognising that restorative justice offers a vision of justice rooted in dignity, participation, responsibility, and repair, closely aligned with the fundamental principles of human rights. It opens new pathways for how we connect, present, and advocate for restorative justice. It offers an important tool for the human rights community to strengthen the implementation of fundamental rights and to promote justice systems that are more people centered, humane, and effective. At the same time, it helps build broader international support for ensuring that access to restorative justice is not a privilege for the few, but a right for all. More than 190 organisations and individuals from around the world endorsed the Manifesto, giving it strong collective legitimacy and momentum. Join us! This message was also at the heart of the second major achievement of the year: an event at the European Parliament in Brussels. Through the Manifesto and the powerful use of art — featuring an excerpt from La mirada del otro, a theatre piece on restorative justice in cases of violent extremism—we began engaging more closely with this European institution and raising awareness among its members of restorative justice in new and compelling ways.

Emanuela Biffi: Opening Doors, Opening Hearts

At the beginning of the year, I was asked to reflect on how EFRJ events strengthen the global restorative justice community and movement. Among other key features, I highlighted the emphasis we place on human connections, on creating a sense of belonging, and on promoting the values of hospitality and solidarity.

The year 2025 has offered another collection of signs of generosity, care, and engagement within, and in support of, our field. According to our traditions, we were hosted by our members for the co-organisation of our international events (Athens, Poznań), or by our project partners, who highlighted restorative justice through their own activities (e.g. Rondine, Klaipėda, Bilbao, to name just a few). Yet the hospitality we received in our home city of Leuven during the REstART Festival was truly unique and unexpected. Citizens opened their doors to host our artists and guests, creating ties worthy of the label “restorative city,” while many others volunteered in different ways, from subtitling and event promotion to preparing food and even babysitting when needed!

This image above is an extract from Guido Bertagna’s board game Journey to Discover the Other (featured in all REstART Festival communications) illustrates the adventures and hospitality we experienced in 2025, a particularly meaningful year for me, witnessing how a culture of encounters, relations and connections unfolds in everyday life, bringing restorative values into action.

Zsófia Anda: Unwrapping the Experience

2025 marked the 25th birthday of EFRJ, celebrated during the connecting event of the REstART Festival.
The festival felt a bit like Christmas: months of preparation, excitement building up, and by the time it finally arrived, we were already tired — but happily so. We were excited to gather our community, reconnect with old friends, and welcome new ones who travelled to Leuven to celebrate with us.

During the festival, it felt like opening a box of bonbons. Each event offered something different: food for thought, moments that warmed the heart, and others that made you feel like a child again, listening to stories from faraway worlds. And then, once it was over, came that familiar feeling — like after Christmas — when everything suddenly goes quiet and you start wondering: what’s next?

I feel incredibly grateful to be part of such a warm-hearted community, and especially to be part of the EFRJ team: a small but resourceful group of people who always try to make the impossible possible, organising events with care, attention, and a lot of heart.

What's Next? - See You in 2026!

This final group photo was taken at our end-of-year Christmas lunch. We are holding the books gifted to us by our Chair, Brunilda Pali — books that serve as a reminder that we do not work in a vacuum, and that reflecting on the world surrounding us is important to us all. It is a special privilege to be engaged in a line of work where we can do this as part of our job.

Now, we are taking a short break to be with our families, to read, and to recharge through other meaningful activities. The Secretariat will reopen on January 5th with renewed energy!

Until then, we wish you a peaceful and restful end to the year. If you feel like it, you can already start getting ready for 2026! You can register for one of the upcoming Winter Academy courses at the early bird rate until December 31st, and registration for our conference in Poznań will open in a few weeks.

Join us again in 2026!

In our newsflashes we share the most interesting and relevant updated about our work and collect information from our members and other individuals and/or organisations working in related fields. Information includes news, local activities, international events, publications, inspiring talks or projects, and much more, taking place in Europe and beyond. Please contact us if you have any comments or any news you would like us to share in our future editions. You can enjoy the previous editions of the EFRJ Newsflashes here. Feel free to forward them to friends or colleagues and invite them to sign up on the EFRJ website!

European Forum for Restorative Justice vzw
Herbert Hooverplein 10, Leuven 3000, BE
RPR Leuven
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euforumrj.org