Fighting Religious Indoctrination in Schools with Monica Belițoiu, ASUR

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Gary reports from the Humanist UK Festival of Humanism — over 650 humanists gathered in Bournemouth for the flagship annual event. Leon updates on the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, where Humanists International is active on resolutions covering freedom of expression, domestic violence, and early child marriage. And the World Humanist Congress in Ottawa is now six weeks away and close to sold out.

This week's guest is Monica Belițoiu, Executive Director of the Romanian Secular Humanist Association (ASUR) and board member of Humanists International. Monica talks about ASUR's campaign giving Romanian parents the legal tools to opt children out of religion classes — including a school textbook that told children they would be hit by a car for skipping Sunday church. She also discusses the Bucharest Science Festival, an EU-funded project on scientific literacy and disinformation, and the European Humanist Services Network — a model of regional humanist cooperation now being explored in Latin America under new regional officer David Pineda.

In this episode we cover -

• Humanist UK Festival of Humanism — over 650 humanists gathered in Bournemouth
• UN Human Rights Council 62nd session: freedom of expression, domestic violence, child marriage
• World Humanist Congress 2026 Ottawa — now an annual event, 500+ tickets sold, six weeks to go
• Humanists International strategy review — Berlin, October 2026
• ASUR's campaign against religious indoctrination in Romanian public schools
• The school textbook telling children they'd be hit by a car for skipping church
• Bucharest Science Festival and ASUR's EU scientific literacy project
• European Humanist Services Network — a replicable model for global humanist cooperation
• New Latin America regional development officer: David Pineda, based in Guatemala

Further reading and references 

• Romanian Secular Humanist Association (ASUR): https://asur.ro/asur-english/ 
• Bucharest Science Festival: https://www.bucharestsciencefestival.ro/ 
• European Humanist Services Network (EHSN): https://humanistservices.eu/ 
• Humanist UK Festival of Humanism 2026: https://humanists.uk/events/festival2026/ 
• World Humanist Congress 2026 — Ottawa, August 7-9: https://humanists.international/event/world-humanist-congress-2026/
• Global Alliance for Human Rights — OHCHR: https://www.ohchr.org - Freedom of Thought Report: https://fot.humanists.international

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🎶Music: Horizon by Simon Folwar

Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.

Transcript

Humanism Festival Highlights In Bournemouth

Leon Langdon 0:04

Welcome to Freedom of Thought, a podcast by Humanist International. With me, Leon Langdon. And me, Gary McClelland. Each week, we'll be discussing news, research, policy developments, and campaigns related to freedom of thought around the world. And by this stage, you'll know that we usually have interviews with humanist leaders or other important leaders in freedom of thought around the world. Later on in this week's episode, you'll hear from Monica Belitsuyu, who is the executive director of the Romanian Secular Humanists Association and also a board member of Humanists International. But in the meantime, Gary, what have you been up to? I believe you were down in Bournemouth earlier this week.

Gary McLelland 0:41

That's right.

Humanism Festival Highlights In Bournemouth

Gary McLelland 0:42

I spent uh the weekend in Bournemouth with our European advocacy officer Jonas and indeed uh the uh Freedom of Thought podcast producer James and many, many others for the Humanist UK's Festival of Humanism, which was an excellent event. And there was almost 700 people there down on the south coast of England, an amazing range of speakers. There was also quite a large contingent of European humanists there that we got to spend some time with. So it was really an exciting event. And to be honest with you, it was getting me really, really excited for the World Humanist Congress, which is coming up in just about six weeks. So yeah, very, very exciting times, lots of good speakers, and some quite uh challenging topics as well explored. So we had a session which was with uh a humanist Israeli and a humanist from Palestine doing a bit of a dialogue session about attitudes to the conflict there and modelling ways of of having conversations there, which was, you know, an interesting, very tense event, but very well executed. And uh yeah, it was a really fantastic event.

Leon Langdon 1:41

I mean, I was I I I enjoyed having my weekend, don't get me wrong, but it did seem like a a really great time and and yeah, a great opportunity, like you say, for for all of our members to come together. I I think, you know, you and I were both up in in Oslo not that long ago at the Nordic Humanist Conference. And I think any opportunity for our members to come together, I think is exactly what what we can sort of help facilitate by by pointing people to to these events, and and insofar as we can be there, I think is super important.

Gary McLelland 2:06

Yeah. And and the the guys at Humanist UK have a tradition of having comedy on the first night of their uh festival now. Is that when you spoke then or half very good? But but other kind of uh you know fun entertainment type things, and uh our listeners were very pleased to know that we will have some very good entertainment at the World Humanist Congress. I won't be so rudious to suggest that that's Leon's session, but there will be a lot of fun music and cultural entertainment and things like that. Because I think that's important. I mean, we're going to be exploring really difficult, challenging topics, and I think it's important that we realise that these events are to some extent of academic value. They're of they're of they're about learning about ways of resisting and and how we can work together in a very serious and important way. But it's also it's we're a community, you know, we're a in a community of human beings, and and it's important that we get together and have a chance to spend time with one another, be inspired. So yeah. But Leon,

UN Human Rights Council Priorities

Gary McLelland 3:00

you've been as busy as ever. The 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council is is underway. Tell us a bit about what's happening.

Leon Langdon 3:08

Yeah, it's it's busy as always. We've got a couple of different priorities. So, in terms of statements and and sort of our public proclamations, as they were, we'll be talking about freedom of expression. Uh, we'll also be supporting some of our members in being involved in the Universal Periodic Review, which for those of you who don't know is is basically the mechanism by which every country in the world has their human rights record reviewed. So off the top of my head, we'll hopefully have members from uh Nepal speaking, as well as Austria and hopefully Australia as well. But also we'll be delivering a statement on domestic violence as part of the annual panel on women's rights. And our new advocacy and research officer, Mythali, has found some really interesting reports there connecting a lot of the work we're already doing on anti-rights movements, on Christian nationalism with rollbacks in in domestic violence policy, opposition to uh ratifying the assemble convention against domestic or on domestic violence. So, some really interesting angles for us there, and I think some some great research that that we'll definitely be leaning on going forward, um, and and we'll try to put that in the show notes as well. And so, as well as the statements, then we'll also be looking at supporting or contributing to different resolutions. So the thematic resolution on freedom of expression will be up for renewal. So we're already involved in that. We're also involved in the resolution on countering disinformation, so we'll be doing that. And then also early child enforced marriage. And only this morning I received a draft that that its current current iteration is lacking any reference to religion or religious or belief minorities. So we'll definitely be pushing for for the return of that because that phenomenon and religion, not going to say go hand in hand by any means, but often it is the instrumentalization of religion that it sort of supports these harmful traditional practices. So, yeah, some really interesting stuff there.

Gary McLelland 4:48

Very good.

Leon Langdon 4:48

Sounds like a very, very busy period again. I hope you're getting some rest. Trying, doing my best. And and I guess the same goes for you. Like we've been talking about you've just been in Bournemouth for the weekend, so you've lost a weekend, but I think I'm really struck by the sort of,

Why Congress Moves To Ottawa

Leon Langdon 5:00

I don't want to say similarities, but definitely the excitement about our upcoming Congress. So, do you want to tell listeners how that's coming along? It's under two months away now, looking at the calendar.

Gary McLelland 5:09

Yeah. I mean, it it's amazing. I guess just to go back to kind of how we ended up here heading to Ottawa, probably listeners will know that the World Humanist Congress used to be an event that happened every three years and it was hosted by a member organization. So the last one we had in 2023 was hosted by a Nordic cooperation led by the Danish Humanists. And previous to that, the previous one was in 2014, hosted by Humanist UK. It'd been cancelled a couple of years in between because of Brazilian economy problems and the pandemic and so on. But that was the format of it, and it was different to our annual gathering and that it was a much bigger scale of event, you know, 500 to a thousand people rather than the usual one or two hundred. But we decided when we had our General Assembly in Singapore in 2024 to change that. Basically, what we wanted to do is to build up in the Humanist International team a sense of the logistics and the skills and experience required to run this event ourselves. Because one of the problems with having this almost like World Cup style event where it's hosted by different nations is that every year is different. It's a completely different style of event, different logistics, and we're kind of making and learning how to run a big event every single year from scratch, which doesn't help us to grow and build almost like the institution of the Congress. So that's kind of how we changed it. And then we were thrust into this new change where it wasn't supposed to happen for a few years, but this year the World Humanist Congress was originally meant to be hosted in Washington, DC by American atheists and other uh collaborations in the United States. It came to be agreed that that was no longer viable due to Trump administration's policies and announcements on travel bans and just the general civic situation in Washington, DC in particular, but in the US in general, that it was just far too unsafe for us to invite people, even if it was possible for people to get visas and so on. So we got in touch with Humanist Canada and they agreed, yeah, let's do it. Let's try and organise a World Humanist Congress in one year. And we've done it. Well, it's not happened yet, but I have to say that the amount of work and collaboration that's gone on behind the scenes between us and Humanist Canada is really remarkable. And I think it's it's almost like one of those things when you have the audacity of trying to pull off something like this, somehow it all falls into place. But we've learned a lot. We initially thought we would maybe get two or three hundred people to Ottawa with a year's notice. At the point of recording this podcast, we are surely going to hit the 500 ticket sales mark, which is remarkable. And we're in discussions with the venue about potentially expanding up to 600 by squeezing tables in a little bit. So, yeah, I mean it is going to be a truly remarkable event. The speakers that we've got, the delegates that we've got from all different countries. I think at the moment we've got 50 or 60 countries that will be represented. So it's going to be, I think, a knockout event. But one of the interesting things that I was talking to some people at the Humanist UK conference was there is going to be a difference in the way that we run the Congress moving forward. So it will no longer be a triennial event run every three years. Our vision, which we will review, is that the Congress will be an annual event. And what this means is it won't be a big thousand-person event every year. It will change, it will it will be different depending on the region that we're in, the situation economically and travel and so on. But essentially, what we want to do is every year we will have an international gathering, and that will be called the World Humanist Congress. There's reasons why that's helpful to us for getting funding and sponsorship and again, like I say, building up the bank of knowledge and experience within our team about how to pull off these events and building the brand and building loyalty from the delegates. So yeah, sorry, that was a very long update about sort of the structure of the Congress. But I have to say, yes, we're we're very, very excited. And I think we've got about six or seven weeks to go, which is it's coming around very quickly.

Leon Langdon 8:57

I think it's interesting that you've effectively compared us to FIFA in that in that sort of explanation.

Gary McLelland 9:03

But but we won't dwell on that given given what the World Cup looks like in the Trevor Burrus, nobody has offered me bags of cash, I have to confirm and clarify yet.

Strategy Review And Big Questions

Leon Langdon 9:12

And I think the other thing that that might be interesting for listeners, I guess particularly those who are members of members of ours or leaders of members of ours, is that we're undergoing a minor strategy review at the moment. Would you like to talk about that?

Gary McLelland 9:24

Yeah. So every year, the way that Humanists International's governance works, and as you say, what we'll hear from one of our board members later, is we have a minimum of six board meetings per year. So four of those are the quarterly meetings where the board reviews the work of the previous quarter, looks ahead. One of those is just ahead of the General Assembly or the Congress to prepare for that, you know, check the resolutions and the minutes and everything like that. Um and but one board meeting per year is what we call our strategy meeting. And that's a chance to not focus on the day-to-day operations, but to really zoom out. And usually the management team will be there, so yourself and other colleagues and other members of staff is relevant, maybe some external guests. And it's really a chance to kind of ask ourselves the big questions. Is our strategy and our aims fit for purpose? Is our vision still the one that we want to realize in the world? Is the work that we're doing helping to get us there? What do we need to do more or less of? But one of the things that we've we've kind of realized is that, you know, last year was a big year of change for the organization. We had people like Elizabeth step down after 15 years of service. We had Andrew as our president step down after again 15 years of service. So there's there's been some renewal of the leadership in Humanists International. So it's really an important time, I think, for us to go a bit deeper in our strategy review than we usually would do. So, you know, you and I, Leon, have been working with other members of the management team to do quite a big, I would say, kind of recategorisation of the way that we work kind of programmatically, so that that can then be fed into the board work so that there can be really a bigger understanding and and uh shared, a kind of detailed understanding of the work that we do, why we do it. And in doing so, again, you know, since we have some new perspectives and new eyes on the board, it will be a really interesting, perhaps challenging, but a really interesting opportunity for people to ask questions like, well, do we still need to do this or do we still need to do this in the same way, or have we tried doing it like this? So I think it's going to be a really exciting time for us in October. And I'm very happy that we'll be hosted in Berlin by our German member there, HVD. So I look forward to that. But how do you feel, Leon, that will be and I guess your second strategy meeting as a member of the management team and quite a big one? What do you think?

Leon Langdon 11:36

Yeah, I think it might even be my fourth strategy meeting overall, technically, actually, since before, I think before two years ago, we had all staff as part of it. I'm I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be a lot of work to get all these sort of projects together and to do that while we're also trying to keep the day-to-day work kind of going, and I'm very grateful to my advocacy team and their support for that. I think it'll be a really interesting time for us, I think, like you say, to have some very frank and often difficult conversations about whether the utility of stuff we're doing is is really there and whether we want to change things. And I think, you know, I'm very open to kind of exploring different ways of doing things internationally. You know, I remember in season one, we obviously talked a lot about, you know, the UN, whether it's fit for purpose anymore, the sort of challenges there. So I think there'll be some interesting conversations around what I think is the importance of staying engaged in that institution while others are are considering pulling away, but I'm also open to alternative ideas and you know, really looking forward to the collaboration on the board and being part of what I think is a really valuable discussion about the direction of this organization. You know, I think you don't stay going as I say an important international NGO for 70 coming up on 75 years next year, I believe, by staying static, by sort of doing things the way you've always done them because you've always done them that way. I think it's really important for us to take these regular opportunities to review, to be dynamic. You know, we spoke with with Fish Stark of on the American Humanist Association in episode one of this season, and and he, you know, said that he's running the AHA like a startup. I don't think we're we're quite there in terms of HI, but I think the the sort of dynamic nature of of what we should be doing is is sort of reflected in that. And I think the more humanist organizations are are willing to change and to adapt and to obviously stay really grounded in those values, but I think those values uh can can really bring us to a lot of different places. So I'm excited for those conversations.

Gary McLelland 13:28

Yeah, exciting times ahead. And of course, if any leaders of member organizations are listening to this, you can get in touch with Leon or I or anyone from the board. If you have any thoughts, opinions, views, challenges that you would like to feed into this process ahead of the General Assembly and our strategy meeting. But I think that's a good time to bring in one of said board members to the discussion, Leon. Sure.

Introducing Monica Belițoiu

Leon Langdon 13:51

Monica Belitsoyu is an NGO communication specialist and the executive director of the Romanian Secular Humanist Association. With over 15 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, she leads advocacy campaigns promoting scientific literacy, critical thinking, and human rights. Monica is an active voice in the international humanist movement, having also served as a board member for Humanist International and Deputy Secretary General of the European Humanist Federation. Monica, welcome to Freedom of Thought.

Monica Belițoiu 14:17

Hi, thank you, Leon. Thank you, Gary, for having me.

Joining The Humanist Movement

Gary McLelland 14:20

Monica, maybe we could start by uh just understanding a bit about what brought you into the humanist movement and how you ended up in the position that you're in now.

Monica Belițoiu 14:28

Yeah, I mean, for that we have to go back some time because I first joined the organization actually uh at the launch conference, and that was back in February 2010. So from then, I think I went through all the stages of someone who joins an organization. So I was a volunteer, then I was a PR consultant, and then I work in different other positions until I was appointed the CEO of the organization. But before that, I was part of a lot of Google groups or Facebook groups of humanists, atheists, and so on. And because there are not that many of us in Romania, we somehow, by the time the organization went form, a lot of us knew each other. So even now, when we talk to, I don't know, when we meet at conferences or some community gatherings or sometimes, we try to reminisce, and it's surprising to see how much time has passed and the fact that we are still in the same organization doing projects together and so on.

Gary McLelland 15:26

Great. And I I'm wondering as well, um, you joined the Humanists International Board last year, and that combines with some of the other international work that you've done previously with the European Humanist Federation and the European Humanist Services Network, which I think we'll talk about a bit later. But

Global Challenges Humanists Now Face

Gary McLelland 15:42

how has it been joining the Board of Humanists International and having that more international perspective?

Monica Belițoiu 15:47

I think it was much different than I've expected because uh the experience I have in Europe, it does not compare. There are so many types of problems in this world that humanists are facing, and there are so many things that have to be done. So the fact that I'm a member of the board and I get to discuss everything and see how we prioritize the work that we do and what resources are allocating and what jobs has to be done before and what comes after. I think it's great that we get to do this. It's uh for me personally, it's a bit sad that we are the only ones doing this type of work. But at the same time, I think it gives hope to a lot of the people because I get to meet people from different continents, I get to speak to humanists from different countries and to listen to the problems that they're having. And sometimes it's surprising to see that we have similar problems, but otherwise, other times we have different problems, but we find somehow similar solutions to them. So it's interesting to get to meet other people.

Leon Langdon 16:48

Just to pick up on that, Monica, what sort of problems do you see across the world? And and actually how does that compare to sort of your experience in Romania?

Monica Belițoiu 16:56

I think one of the things that was talked at length in different kinds of contexts was the polarization and the influence of social media in public policy and day-to-day conversations, and how they change the family dynamics and how they change the way different organizations work or communicate with their members and their public. So this is one of them. Something else that came up a lot in the conversation was religion in public schools, religious education in public schools, and the fact that in much too many cases uh it's being taught as dogmatic instead of, I don't know, uh history of religion or something like this. So this is these are the just two of the issues that no matter the continent, you find some countries that are facing the same problems.

Gary McLelland 17:42

That's interesting.

Combating Religion Indoctrination in Schools

Gary McLelland 17:43

I wonder, Monica, uh, we know that in Romania, as you mentioned, the religion in schools has been a big issue. And I know that uh the Romanian Secular Humanist Association has many campaigns to help parents understand their rights and obligations about religion in schools. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

Monica Belițoiu 18:00

Yeah, uh we actually, one of the first campaigns that we started was to stop religious indoctrination in public schools. And I'm talking about public schools because in Romania the system of education is a bit different from for private schools, and most of them do not teach religion in private schools. So uh the main issue is that even if the law says that religious classes should be uh opt-in and you should submit a request to attend the classes, in practice the schools are uh giving the parents the request just to sign when they enrol the kids in the education system. So and afterwards it's pretty hard to make them abide by the law and to convince them that uh you want to opt out or you do not want to attend the classes and so on. So we actually recently launched a platform about this with legal resources and templates for letters that can be addressed to school or uh school committees and so on, that can help parents to know, and kids also to know and to understand their rights, and also to know what can be done in different kinds of situations. And it's strange to me that even if the law changed, and um to some extent, for example, some of the books that are used to sell religion have changed after some of our intervention. There's still a lot of problems, and we still get usually emails from parents telling us, so I have this problem in this county, or I have this problem in this county. And we started drafting some template response for this, and then we said these parents are all facing more or less uh the same five or six problems. How come we don't have like a guide for them? And this was the the beginning of the platform that we did. Uh and we were accused that we have a problem with religious education. It's not that we have a problem with religious education, is that uh if, for example, one of the books in the past years now is not available anymore, but in one of the books he said there were pictures showing that if you do not go to church on Sunday and you prefer as a child to play, you will get hit by a car. And this was in the the book that you were studying from at school. So um this this is the issue that we are facing, and these are the solutions that that we want to to provide to the parents because the pressure is there, but uh we want to make it clear that the loss is otherwise and the loans on the the side of the parents and the kids.

Leon Langdon 20:28

That makes sense, Monica, and that book sounds kind of outrageous, honestly. You know, coming from a religious country, I don't even think we we had you know books at least that bad. To

Science Literacy Projects And Tools

Leon Langdon 20:38

stay on education, I I know your organization has also done a lot on science education and the promotion of critical thinking and scientific awareness. Could you chat a little bit about that?

Monica Belițoiu 20:47

Yeah, most of the projects that we do have to do with science education and science literacy. We are doing the science calendar, of course, which is the most known project that we have. We are doing every year Bucharest Science Festival, which is five days in September with tens of events in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, where people can experiment, where they can attend conferences on science, where they can participate in workshops, and it's for kids but also for adults, so it's something really, uh really nice to have. One of the projects that draw the most volunteers for our organization because everyone wants to be involved to attend all the events. And then we have some projects for scientific literacy. Right now we we are coordinating a European-funded uh project about uh scientific literacy as a catalyst for change. And uh, in this project, we are developing a learning platform which will be available in English in six other languages where you can test your knowledge about uh fake news and disinformation and stuff like this, and you can get some tools to make it easier for everyone to separate fact from fiction and so on. And also, we start. We started a book club called Facts and Fictions, where every month we choose a book that it's either fiction or it's promoting science, it's non-fiction. So when we discuss those books with the same uh intention to make it easier for people to separate fact from fiction and to also, I don't know, to help us uh build some communities around uh the people that are interested in these ideas.

Sharing Playbooks Across Countries

Gary McLelland 22:24

It's interesting, Monica. I'm wondering, you know, we've spoken a bit there about the rights of children, science education, education generally, cooperation. Um I'm just wondering as well, the kind of common threads of these issues that might be applicable to other member organizations around the world. You know, we're talking about education, the importance of freedom of thought, which is very relevant for this podcast. What would your message be to other members of Humanists International around the world about how they can come together in coalition with other members and take forward programs that address these important issues?

Monica Belițoiu 22:58

I can speak from personal experience here because when we first started, for example, humanist ceremonies in Romania, we got help from humanists from Scotland who trained us for free. Afterwards, when we first did a humanist uh summer camp for youth in Romania, we got help from humanists in Norway. So every time we wanted to do something, we reach out to another humanist organization and we ask would it be possible to share some knowledge with us and or to collaborate with us or to do something like this. And also I was approached by humanists from other countries to discuss uh how we did some of the projects that we did and if they can adapt our projects to their countries, like uh we did with the science calendar, who was adapted in Spain and then in Poland and in Scotland and so on. So I think just to know that the door is open and we are all humanists and we can help each other, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Uh you just have to make use of the knowledge that is already there and to know that you can get help from people who have done something before and maybe they can help you start something in your country. And I think Humanist International is uh the perfect network for this because you just go online and see. But this is actually a way that we use freedom of thought report in uh in Romania. We look at the issue that we have in our country and then we see what other countries are facing the same issues. And I know it's not a laughing matter, but it's just a starting point, a very useful one to start to see if you can talk to humanists from those countries and to see uh have you done something to tackle this problem? What have you done? Maybe we can use something similar, maybe we can help each other out, maybe we can have like a video conference for our members to try to rally them to do some change.

European Humanist Services Network Model

Leon Langdon 24:49

That all makes sense, Monica. And I think in in speaking about cooperation between humanist organizations, I think a great example of that is members of Humanist International have come together to form the European Humanist Services Network. I was wondering if you could speak a bit about that and your experience of that, and for our listeners who might not be aware of it, if you could give a little bit of background.

Monica Belițoiu 25:09

Yes. Um in in Europe, because it's so easy to travel from one country to another, we met a lot between ourselves on the conferences and on different uh formats and so on. And we noticed that uh it's easier to work together on a lot of the issues, and we noticed that we do a lot of the things similar, like uh we do most of us we do ceremonies, we do youth projects. We also we don't have in Romania, but others have existential care services, and then we decided why not uh have a like a way to exchange experiences, to learn from each other, and to better ourselves and to start to see if we can collaborate on something. And this was the beginning. We have some working seminars every year. This year is gonna be in September in Berlin. Uh we have a meeting every year where we discuss the strategy and we have working groups where, and this is important, everyone volunteers their time. Every member organization sends their people to these meetings on their own time. So this is a joint effort, so to say. It's an informal group of people who want to work together in uh Europe because it's closer to home and it's easier for us to connect. And I think it's something that can be done on other continents also. It's something that can be tried at least on other continents, because I think uh if you are joined by some cultural uh lines and can talk to people in a region, uh it will make for a great start of uh of a similar network.

Gary McLelland 26:46

I think it's been an amazing model of cooperation that's developed, and as you say, it's developed in a way which is sort of natural evolution, perhaps even we could say. And um as you know, Monica, you know, we we've been discussing on the board of Humanists International for many years now the extent to which we should organize regionally or nationally or internationally, and I think this model has kind of pushed forward that discussion quite a bit. So, only in the last few weeks we've appointed a new Latin American development officer, David Pineda, who's based in Guatemala. And I actually think that the EHSN network will be a really good model for him to explore, you know, it'll be different in different contexts around the world, but it's it's a model which is there to be learned from and to be experienced. And I'm hoping that he might join me at that meeting in Bucharest in November actually to get to learn a bit about how that network has been growing. But I think it is an interesting way to um perhaps anticipate the challenges in a particular region and build those relationships and those networks.

Monica Belițoiu 27:47

Yeah, I'm looking forward to having you all in Bucharest this November. I think it's amazing that uh we can use an example from one corner of the world to build something on another corner of the world because I know on a of course a much smaller scale, the fact that we adapted the ceremonies from Scotland and Romania, the fact that the Polish have adapted the calendar from Romania to Poland and stuff like this, you can use just a seed and then see uh how you can make it grow in uh in the corner of the world you live in.

Gary McLelland 28:19

I was just thinking, Monica, talking about the the international cooperation and the learning that we can do from

Youth Leadership And Regional Hubs

Gary McLelland 28:25

each other. I wonder, do you have a vision or an aim or what would you like to see as the future direction of humanists international and this international cooperation that we have?

Monica Belițoiu 28:35

I mean, I have so many. Uh but uh one of the things that I would like it's actually inspired, but what we've done here in Romania is to kind of grow more humanist young leaders to make sure that when we have events, there are not only people like myself over 40 or something like this, but also young people because every time, uh even in the European Humanist Services Network, we have a working group for youth. And then a lot of the organizations are sending the youngest people in their organization just to learn from each other and to communicate, to make sure that the movement continues to grow with the next generation and it's not built for the next generation by older people, it's built by them using their knowledge and their needs. So this is something that will be of interest for me. And also having regional humanist hubs or something like this. It makes it more easier when you do advocacy work, for example, to have more voices from one region coming together on uh an issue that affects a lot of the people in that region.

Leon Langdon 29:42

Thank you, Monica. I know having more young people at humanist events is something of interest to me as someone who trends towards the the younger side, but I think there's some really nice ideas that that we're excited to take forward and I know the board are working hard on. As we're sort of coming to the end of our time and and looking forward to, for example, the World Humanist Congress coming up in in really a few short weeks at this point in Ottawa.

Ottawa Congress Themes And Takeaways

Leon Langdon 30:05

Do you have any parting thoughts for our listeners, takeaways that you'd like them to have, or what you might like them to know about either Humanist International or or what's going on in Romania?

Monica Belițoiu 30:15

Actually, I'm really excited about the Ottawa Congress. Uh I I think it's gonna be my fifth Congress attendance, and I think uh this kind of events are most inspiring for me, and I think for a lot of other humanists, because you get to meet in a short period of time, you get to meet a lot of people, and I saw I seen in other congresses people taking notes, people exchanging contacts, people just learning from each other during the breaks, not only in the from the panels or from the keynote speaker and so on. But uh this year I think it's the fact that the message is uh about resistance, it's very in tune with what is happening in uh the global context. So as a member of the Humanist International, the fact that we get to talk about the problem and to uh come together to find some solutions is uh very important. Because if you do not uh acknowledge the problem, if you don't see the problem, then it's really hard to solve it. And for me, this is an opportunity to maybe come to some solution about what humanists can do. Because apart from growing the humanist movement, it's what this movement can do for humanity. What can we do as humanists for other humanists, but for the f humans in general.

Gary McLelland 31:34

Thank you so much for your time, Monica. That's been wonderful.

Monica Belițoiu 31:37

Thank you.

Gary McLelland 31:38

Thank you, Monica.

How To Support The Podcast

Leon Langdon 31:40

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