Savannah Koolen
Savannah Koolen is coordinator and founder of the Here to Support foundation. She will participate in the conference Governing Brooklyn on Saturday June 22.
Savannah has been involved in politics, activism and the art world all her life. For ten years she has been working on how artists and artistic projects, can support and strengthen the struggle of minorities and refugees to equal rights. From the start of refugee collective We Are Here in 2012 in Amsterdam she worked on setting up artistic and educational projects to increase the visibility and resilience of refugees in limbo. The main project of the last year was Amsterdam City Rights and the campaign for a City IDCard in Amsterdam. In 2016, the Here to Support Foundation won the Ab Harrewijn Prize under her leadership and in May 2017 the We Are Here Media Academy, a project initiated by her, won the European Citizenship Award. She was also campaign leader of the winning election campaign of GroenLinks Amsterdam for the municipal elections in 2018. In addition to her work at the Here to Support foundation she was head of the board of GroenLinks Amsterdam till june 2019.