Refugia FA Update - March 2023

by The Socialist Solarpunk Society of Sylh Alanor

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The Official FA Dispatch

Hidey-ho, party people, and welcome to the Foreign Affairs Update for March 2023! This has become a tradition, to send out an FA disclosure after each election, and it makes sense, because we want you to know what’s up with us! What have we been up to? What do we want you to know? It’s always a treasure, these times we have together.

So let’s start off strong! Refugia completed our twelfth election in February, and only one incumbent retained their seat! This election was notable for being the first time anyone has chosen to run as co-Councillors, an oversight that has since been corrected, but we’re happy to let them play it out. The new Council consists of:

• A Million Dreams, beginning her second term as Councillor of Operations

• Sylh Alanor, beginning her fifth term as Councillor of Foreign Affairs

• Tiralta and Lethodus, beginning their first term as Co-Councillors of Culture

• Junitaki-cho, beginning her third term as Councillor of World Assembly Affairs

• Refuge Isle, stalwart and inevitable Arch-Admin.

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Results for the 2022 Refugi Census

The Refugi Census was completed at the end of last year, and has shown immense growth in the community. There was a census in 2009, though it has only been a truly annual tradition since 2013. This year, we had an incredible turnout- 84 responses- and learned a lot of cool stats about our community. For example, our non-binary population has skyrocketed, and the average age of our members keeps going down.

One of my favourite parts of the census is that it introduces more people to our wider community, Calamity Refuge, and the things we run that aren’t part of NationStates. A lot of people who join Refugia don’t know about our forums, RPs, wiki. Some people don’t even know about the discord server, so it’s always a welcome event to see people checking in after the results are published. Check out the full results, should you be so inclined, in the dispatch to the right ->

Things have been going wild in the Battle of All Things 2, a regional event wherein 16 concepts entered by Member States are going head-to-head in regional votes. The winners (and losers!) are guaranteed incredibly valuable and rare cards, including a guaranteed Testlandia for every entry in the round of 16. We’ve recently finished the first round of votes, giving out eight Season 2 Testlandias and locking in eight Season 1 Testlandias. The final winner will end up with 1500 MV worth of cards, including a Season 1 Helaw, Soops, and Rubyna, all three of which are the prize for the ultimate winner!

Refugia participated yet again with The Potato Alliance in last month’s N-Day⁸ Though our #Shield Gang antics didn’t net us quite the same results as they did last autumn, the Refugi involved were happy just being there and having fun with our embassy friends!

In other news, Refugia is currently sitting at third in average endorsements as a region! We have runs where we’re second, but our endotarting game is strong and we’re proud of it.

Finally, if you’re one of our embassy regions and you have any ideas of things to do together, please let me know! We’re hoping to get more involved with our friends, and are always happy to attend movie nights, game nights, or any other regional/community events you might have in mind. We look forward to getting to know everyone better.

Until next time,

Sylh Alanor
Refugia

Read dispatch

A copy of our most recent Foreign Affairs dispatch.

The Office of Foreign Affairs, currently overseen by Councillor Chacapoya, works to establish and maintain positive relationships with other regions on NationStates. We are responsible for overseeing the development of travel runes for embassy regions, as well as maintaining and cleaning the gates that will sweep our Envoys from the safety of Refugia and deposit them in different regions around the world. Once in place, our envoys maintain a presence in the diplomatic sector of that region, delivering news from Refugia to our friends, as well as delivering information about the goings-on of that region back to us.

Refugia is a region that prides itself on its stability. We’ve had a steady arc of population growth since 2019, most of our embassies are several years old, and our community has maintained a positive, inclusive equilibrium since it was founded. The community is generally made up of irreverent heckposters. We love the environment and deeply care about environmental issues, as well as human rights. We generally try to seek out other regions with similar tones and ideals, so we can share the hard-won enthusiasm and positivity with others. Because of this outlook, the things we look for in other embassies aren’t concrete numbers and figures. We simply want regions that share our ideals and are stable. If your region fills these requirements and has been around for over a year and is either maintaining its population or growing, that's usually enough to give you a chance.

Before opening or closing any embassies, we put the question to the region’s Member States with a four-day referendum. This means we will never accept an unprompted embassy request. If you’re interested in opening an embassy with us, contact the Councillor of Foreign Affairs. We’ll spend some time watching or participating in your community to see if we’d get along, and then put it to a vote. Because of this, the process will usually take at least two weeks before an embassy could be opened. If your region is fascist or in any way anti-left or anti-LGBT, or if you share embassies with regions that are, don't bother reaching out. Your request will be denied outright.

Refugi are always interested in keeping up contact with our friends! If you're in one of our embassy regions, we'd love to have you chat with us through our RMB. While we've historically been a bit isolationist, that doesn't extend to our embassies. Please forward any offers of shared regional events, game nights, movie nights, etc. to the Councillor of Foreign Affairs, or share the offer in our RMB! We've almost always accepted invitations to events, whether that be an N-Day faction with our embassies, inter-regional culture events, or discord festivals.