Recently, Commons Network added a new member to their team: Renee Kuiken. She joined us in March as an intern from our office in Amsterdam. In the following text, she will further introduce herself.
Whilst studying Public Management in Amsterdam I worked with a lot of non-profit organisations that aim to improve the position of minorities in Amsterdam. Working on these projects has made me realise that even though non-profit organisations and governmental organisation already work together, there remains much room for improvement. More specifically, non-profit organisations are blasted with rules and regulations that make a fluent co-operation between the two entities difficult and, thus, keeps them from reaching their goals.
This is also a problem while looking at political parties and the political agenda. Namely, political parties often do not include commons into their agenda. Therefore, for me, to be a part of an organisation such as Commons Network is an opportunity to contribute on solving this problem by connecting commons thinking, activism and politics.
During my internship I will be a part of the Commons for Europe 2019. This campaign is the ‘Commons Scoring Project’. Here, Commons Network will be evaluating and rating Dutch candidates and political parties that represent The Netherlands in the European Parliament elections of this year.
My role during this campaign includes, among other things, analysing the political agenda of different Dutch candidates and establishing a set of criteria to compare the candidates based on their commitment to the commons. Doing this will hopefully encourage political candidates to incorporate more commons-related topics in their platforms.
