Growing together

The project starts from an observation: even if young Europeans don’t experience a severe economic crisis, at a social level or of values, they still believe that cooperation and support to developing countries should be a priority of the European Union and they are convinced that the individual commitment is still an indispensable source of change.
Almost nine out of ten citizens are in favor of development aid from Europe. An average of 89%, the highest of the last 6 years with an increase of 4 points compared to 2014. Almost 69% said that fighting poverty in developing countries should be an EU priority and above all, 8 out of 10 citizens are convinced that this is in the interest of Europe itself.
These are some of the highlights emerged by the Eurobarometer data, presented by the European Commissioner for Development “Mimica” in the annual poll that gauge the European public opinion on development aid issues and the fight against poverty. Data collected in the 28 EU countries between November and December of 2015.
They were also positive feedback on cooperation as a European priority. Even the focus on the younger group 15-24 was good, and that express greater openness to issues of development cooperation. Compared to the rest of the population over 25 years, 78% to 71% are the risults and on the issue of the importance of individual commitment, 61% to 52%.
These data tell us that perhaps the most negative issues in European society make noise and are visible, but not in the majority of the popolution. Two are the recommendations that rise from this: governments and European institutions must have more courage and determination; civil society organizations and NGOs must increase the quantity and quality of their commitment, beliving that the good reasons of common sense, of concreteness and solidarity can find a wide open area of discussion.
The project aims to open a space for discussion to reflect on the quality and real effectiveness "educational" aid and to create the basic conditions for the sustainability of interventions.
A sustainability that can be made possible only through the promotion of inclusive processes of empowerment, ownership and capacity building: in other words, strongly played processes in the perspective of the educational dimension.
The intervention that we propose wants to promote the development education and raising awareness among young Europeans (14-30 years) on cooperation and development policies. To address these issues, we want to use participatory methods, dialogue-oriented and experimental: the Theatre of the Oppressed, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and communication strategies and unconventional marketing.
These approaches will promote an enabling environment for youth citizen participation, cooperation, exchange of knowledge and experience, all of which are essential to the achievement of internationally agreed development goals. Using these methods we will realize information activities, awareness and communication to the public, allowing young people to strengthen their critical awareness of development and participate with greater awareness and competence to development, both globally and locally.
Globalization and interdependence mean that "development" is not a phenomenon exclusively or only in the "South" or in areas and societies other than European. The education and awareness development intend to pay specific attention to the links between the problems and the challenges of development in Europe and elsewhere, encouraging understanding of the similarities between the various processes and interests with regard to development in the world and, on that base, involving citizens in experiences and creative initiatives that highlight the relevance of global development to local situations and vice versa.
We hope that by promoting development cooperation based on mutual exchange and not state support, whose goal is collaboration, work together to create a more and more globalized, interdependent and changing world, the following goals are met:
• Develop economic relations aimed at eliminating poverty and socio-economic exclusion; fighting economic disparities and encouraging the establishment of relations with the world economies, based on the principles of justice, fairness and inclusion.
• Developing social and cultural relations aimed at promoting fairness and practical solidarity between peoples; support and extend the application of human rights and responding to migration and the need to build a multicultural society but a source of cohesion.
• Allow and encourage public participation in decision-making on development and stimulate and maintain a sense of belonging and of personal and communal identity, based on global citizenship in an interdependent world, constantly changing.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, awareness and development education, are called to take up challenges and old and new opportunities, especially with regard to the following requirements:
• The need to increase awareness among the European public opinion on international development and its relationship with global interdependence, as well as the way in which this development and this interdependence affect on the understanding and on the individual, local, national and European actions, which are affected at the same time.
• The need to meet the growing demand for effectiveness, by European citizens, the development policy and development cooperation in general, including the effectiveness of the initiatives of education and awareness development, financed by public or private funds.
• The need to integrate education and awareness initiatives for development in major systems and existing educational and information processes, formal and informal, making full use of appropriate educational and pedagogical approaches to reach the European public.
• The need to have skills, professional methods and tools to assess the impact and quality of initiatives, through better collaboration and shared experiences of learning between Europeans, state and civil society actors, to extend the effect of work made and enhance its impact.
To overcome many of these challenges and opportunities, the project aims to identify the social business as a new paradigm for international cooperation because it can give an answer to the problem of disparities by providing solutions for the inclusion of the most vulnerable and marginalized populations of the countries in developing, providing basic goods and services for the development of these communities. It would also help to overcome the mere donation that creates distance between the donors and the beneficiaries, making the beneficiary the same promoter and protagonist, protecting and guaranteeing the human self-development and self-promotion.