FAQ on the UEEH registration fees

Pay-what-you-want is a practice that consists in letting the person who pays decide how much they want to pay. It’s a political choice that:

• Allows more people to participate (ideally, without financial requirements)
• Empowers people to decide for themselves what value they place on what they pay by giving them a choice;
• Tries to compensate for income and wealth differences.

In practice, at the UEEH, we tell you how much your stay costs, and we recommend you different prices that would allow us to break even.

Depending on your budget, you can choose one of the prices, or pay less, or pay more. The contribution of people who pay more allows to compensate for people who pay less.

If all is right, the contributions of everyone are balanced. That way, thanks to pay-what-you-want, the UEEH can remain accessible, and everyone is happy.

There are other ways to do pay what you want. For some people and organizations, it’s not really pay-what-you-want as long as there’s a minimum price, or as long as there are recommended prices.

At the UEEH, for our first experiment in 2026, We have decided to retain parts of our pricing structure from previous years, by including a minimum fee and recommended fees that match approximately what we had in the previous years.

The different fees are on the page Registration fees for UEEH 2026.

We invite you to choose a fee, or an in-between, that matches your financial situation. No justification is required. You will find some questions to help you assess your situation in the next question « How to assess my financial situation? ».

The « median » fee roughly corresponds to the actual costs of the UEEH, per person (see the question « How is the money from my registration spent? »). For information, it’s half the cost of an average hotel in the area.

The « reduced+ » fee (at -60%) is the lowest fee that we have deemed reasonable to propose considering the financial situation of the association. For those in the most precarious situations, it’s even possible to pay a little less (the minimum is at -75%).

The support fees help support the UEEH and contribute to pay for reduced fees.

The institutional fee is a fee that applies to participants whose costs are covered by an institution (embassy, NGO, corporation…).

To compare your situation to others, we invite you to assess your financial situation and privileges. To that effect we prepared a list of questions, that is incomplete, but that we recommend you read entirely.

Questions regarding money:

• How much savings do you have?
• How much inheritance have you received?
• How much do you have in assets? (car, accommodation, valuables…)
• What is your income?
• Do you pay taxes?
• Will you receive a pension when you retire?

Questions regarding expenses:

• Do you have health insurance, universal health care or otherwise health coverage?
• Do you have dependents?
• Does your rent represent more than half of your income?
• Do you have addictions that impact your finances?
• Are you indebted?
• Do you have important health expenses?

Questions regarding jobs or housing:

• Do you face discrimination or systemic barriers to accessing work or income?
• Do you have a driver’s license?
• Do you have a permanent place to live?
• Have you completed any education and/or earned any credentials that make you employable?
• Do you have cultural capital that makes you employable?

Questions regarding family situation:

• Do you have family who could support you?
• Do you have to travel far to see your loved ones?

Questions regarding administrative situation:

• Do you face significant administrative or legal restrictions? (e.g., a visa without work authorization, a short-term residence permit, mandatory check-ins at the prefecture…)
• Do you hold citizenship in the country where you live or have a long-term residence permit?
• Is your native language the same as the language of the country where you live?
• Is your country’s currency weak compared to the euro?
• Is being LGBT+ a criminal offense in the country where you live, or in the country you come from?

It’s possible to pay by bank transfer, or through the HelloAsso platform (a private link will be sent by email to registrants), or in cash once on site.

It’s also possible to pay in instalments over several months, contact us to discuss it!

The recommended fee is a €35 fixed part + €27 per night.

This amount allows us to pay for the UEEH expenses: organization costs, venue rental, meal ingredients are expensive (see the question on how the money is spent).

Depending on your budget, we invite you to pay more or less; for that we suggest several recommended fees, detailed on the page Registration fees for UEEH 2026. These recommendations are all derived from the median fee (by adding or substracting 30% or 60%).

If you don’t reside in France, the fees recommended to you are adjusted using the GNI PPP (gross national income at purchasing power parity) per capita of your country of residence. This indicator allows us to tailor the fees to better fit the financial realities of everyone (though it’s far from perfect). Data source: world bank.

Everyone pays a membership fee to join the association.

With some exceptions (see the question on free registrations), every participant in the UEEH pays for their registration, including organizers and invitees (for workshops, screenings…). No one is paid to participate, organize or speak at the UEEH: everyone is a participant and everyone is a volunteer.

Nonetheless, we have a small budget to cover visa and travel expenses for some of the orga, for people with a migratory background living in a European country that does not accord them the papers necessary to work, and for some of the invitees (see next question).

The UEEH invite each year, to prepare the programme, specific activists and collectives whose work is relevant to the edition’s theme, or meets needs and wants expressed by participants of the previous edition.

Specific activists and collectives are also invited each year for the needs of the UEEH (in particular to organize HIV and hepatitis screenings and to help with interpretation in different languages).

All invitees pay their registration like everyone else.

However, we do have a small envelope for travel expenses: about €2,000, distributed between 30 and 40 people. This budget allows us to cover some of the travel costs of invitees, in particular those who come from abroad, based on their individual needs.

People who live in « Global South » countries, as well as people with a migratory background living in a European country that does not accord them the papers necessary to work, and for some of the invitees, can get a free registration if they want (fee at €0).

Yes, any amount above the median recommended fee is a donation to the association.

The UEEH are a general interest non-profit association, therefore these donations can grant tax reductions for people who pay taxes in France (up to 66% of the donation amount).

People eligible will be able to obtain a fiscal receipt after having paid their registration.

Registration money allows us to pay for accommodation, venue rental, food, insurance, equipment, and so on.

Per person and per day, the UEEH budget is:

• X € / personne et par jour pour la location du lycée
• X € / personne et par jour pour les repas
• X € / personne et par jour pour les différents frais à l’année nécessaire aux UEEH (assurance, banque, location d’un box de stockage)
• X € / personne et par jour pour l’organisation des UEEH (travail en présentiel de l’orga)
• X € / personne et par jour pour les défraiements des trajets des personnes invitées, des personnes de l’orga.

In addition to these costs, there are costs associated with international organization (international commission, local coordinations), that are paid for in part by grants (including from embassies), in part by donations (online fundraiser), and in part by the registrations.

It depends on the year. Generally, registrations represent roughly the two thirds of the UEEH budget.

Without this kind of self-financing, it would not be possible to organize the UEEH in its current conditions: with a large venue, actual bedrooms, a professional kitchen, a lot of spaces, amenities for disabled participants, and so on, and also the international aspect.

Note: if you ever come across good tips for places that could host the UEEH, we’re intrested! 🕵️✨

In the previous years, the registration fee was calculated in the following way:

• The median fee was €50 (fixed part) + €25 per night.
  For a 6 day stay (5 nights), the fee was €175.
• Invitees for workshops specifically had one night offered.
• People who didn’t use a bed (by sleeping in their tent, truck or car) had a 15% discount.
• People in precarious situations because of racism, ableism or transmisogyny could have a 20% discount.
• Participants chose a fee, between reduced+ (-60%), reduced (-30%), median (=), support (+30%), support+ (+60%).
• The final result was then adjusted based on the GDP by capita of the country of residence, compared to France.
• If the GDP per capita was less than 30% of that of France (mostly non-European countries), the registration was automatically free.
• Optionally, people could make a donation.

This caused several problems:

• The registration fees system was quite complex to explain and to setup.
• The free night for invitees created a gap between participants, in contradiction with our values of popular education; we want for invitees to be participants like everyone else, who also enjoy the edition. By the way, any participant can propose workshops.
• The « truck discount » made some people with lower income choose to sleep outside for financial reasons instead of by preference.
• The gap / difference between suggested fees is significantly high, so it’s difficult to pay the « right » amount that matches your budget.
• GDP per capita is an indicator that exaggerates differences between countries. GDP is a measure of production, that does not account for income, standard of living, cost of living, available savings, or wealth inequality within a country.
• Automatic free registration for people from countries whose GDP per capita was less than 30% than that of France, was causing the fee to be zeroed even for peope who wanted to contribute.

With the current system:

• UEEH fees are still difficult to explain and setup (so we decided to publish a FAQ! By the way, thanks for reading this far! 🥰)
• The free night for invitees has been removed. Invitees can still benefit from a partial refund of their travel expenses, depending on our budget.
• People with low income can pay less than the « reduced+ » recommended fee (the minimum fee is lower), which makes it possible to have a fee similar to the old « truck discount », without having to sleep outside if we don’t want to, or can’t.
• We use the GNI PPP per capita. With this indicator, differences between countries are less exaggerated, but can still be important. There are other indicators like the « Price level » that would reduce these differences more, but we don’t know if these indicators would be relevant.
• The fee is not zeroed automatically depending on the country of residence. People who live in a country where the GNI PPP per capita is low can therefore contribute if they want to. The fees recommended to them are adjusted depending on the GNI PPP. Also, they can still choose to register for free.