Dear Sisters and Brothers, Council Members, colleagues, partners and allies of StreetNet Family around the world!

First of all, I would like to sincerely extend my warm greetings and gratitude to each of you for your unshakable commitment and contributions to the cause and mission of StreetNet International and mainly – for the empowerment and strengthening the voice of our members worldwide!

I also take this opportunity to summarize and reflect on the achievements, challenges, and lessons learned that have shaped our journey of this year.

Together and in unity, we have put a lot of efforts at different levels to advocate for the workers’ rights and legal recognition, dignity and respect of street vendors, reaffirming the strength of our global solidarity, collective actions and resilience.

This year was full of challenges, from socio-economic uncertainties to lasting wars and conflicts, climate crises and its devastating impact on people.

As the global trends show, the rise of populist and pro-right-wing regimes only broaden authoritarianism which directly impacts the rights and livelihood of street and market vendors: restrictions on democratic civic space make it harder to organize and even, in some cases, survive for already existing organizations; our leaders and activist started to face more harassment, persecution and legal challenges which prevents them to act; reduced access to authorities and criminalization of informal work, punitive laws and exclusion from any rights very often discourage the members to stay motivated to act.

Despite anything, we continue our journey because we have already developed the ability to adjust our strategies to the current situations and also trying to influence our future.

Indeed, it was a tough but also very productive year and all of these fruits are a result of a great team work!

Some of our significant highlights of 2024 include:

• Increasing StreetNet Membership to 916 015 members;
• Developing a new StreetNet Stategic Plan for the next four years;
• Hosting strategic institutional meetings at regional and international levels;
• Launching a Youth Project for building youth leadership across the Affiliates for sustainability and development;
• Launching a Street Vendors’ Barometer initiative on data collection and research in collaboration with the Global Labour Institute;
• Supporting Affiliates through trainings, exposure visits and webinars in uplifting their negotiation skills and advocating for fair and inclusive urban policies, extension of social protection, elimination of violence and harassment from their working places and empowering their voice, especially for women vendors;
• Strengthening regional alliances to promote social protection policy for informal economy workers through development and advocating for the Platform of Demands on Social Protection (in Africa);
• Building more decentralized StreetNet Media and Communication through building a network of the media activists globally;
• Building a solid Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation system within StreetNet to upgrade the efficiency level ;
• Expanding StreetNet presense at global advocacy spaces and building partnership with human rights/pro-worker Institutions and researchers.

I am proud to say that the StreetNet ambitious Workplan of 2024 has been successfully implemented and a huge role and responsibility for its implementation was played by our great staff members, who did an extremely great job, staying in permanent communication with our Affiliates and Regional Focal Points, bridging and assisting our members while staying guided by our elected International Leaders.

By aspiration of our Media Team, we have launched a brand new institutional website which is not only an information hub with educational content, but also a great communication, advocacy and visibility platform to showcase the inspiring stories and voice of street vendors and their struggles and victories.

Social protection, climate change, sustainability and formalization of informal economy (to be discussed during the ILO Conference in 2025), are the main focus themes for the upcoming year agenda.

Empowering women, youth and media activists will continue to be the core institutional programs for 2025 along with other more regional activities on tax justice, urban policy, data collection, negotiations skills, advocacy toolkit and impact stories collection.

I am sure that the year ahead holds new opportunities and possibilities, so we can deepen solidarity and ensure that street vendors’ voices remain at the center of global discourse.

Let this new year inspire us to stay united for transformative progress of our movement.

Wishing you all a peaceful holiday season and a prosperous New Year!

Nothing for Us without Us!

Oksana Abboud, StreetNet International Coordinator