EDLS story: how to better inform EU citizens about global development issues
To support the European Days of Local Solidarity (EDLS) 2019 campaign, PLATFORMA is publishing a series of success stories and testimonies of cities and regions engaged in development education and awareness raising on decentralised cooperation. The third “EDLS story” focuses on how the EU is supporting Development Education and Awareness Raising together with local and regional governments.
The European Union reckons the particular role of Local and Regional Governments (LRGs) in Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR) and has provided them, together with CSOs, with dedicated funding since 2006 through the DEAR Programme (as part of the ‘Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development’ thematic programme). The objectives of this programme are to inform EU citizens about global development issues, to mobilise greater public support for action against poverty and to change attitudes towards active and critical engagement.
The 2018 Call (€77.000.000) dedicated €19.250.000 under LOT 3, while in 2016 DEAR funded Local and Regional Governments (LRGs) as lead or partner in 10 different projects. LRGs have a long experience in pan-European alliances with peers thanks to DEAR projects in topics that are managed at the local level on a daily basis: migration, gender equality and participation of women in society, localisation of ODS and climate change, among others.
FAMSI has a long experience as lead or partner in European projects in the field of DEAR. The role of the association is to mobilise, capitalise and scaling up the local and provincial efforts on Development Education and Awareness Raising. They federate and thus facilitate the involvement of a wider range of local and regional governments and guarantee the effective transferability of the results and knowledge generated by the projects across territories.
Under the ongoing “Amitié Code”, FAMSI articulates the Andalusia Region participation together with the region of Emilia Romagna eight Cities (Bologna, Hamburg, Reggio Emilia, Riga, Loures, Lisbon, Toulouse, Seville) to an innovative project of awareness and learning about migration, development and human rights. The experience of partners in the field of international cooperation and as peer sin previous DEAR projects is fostering an impactful work targeting teachers and civil servants working in local authorities, teachers and students and the whole local community through online visual material.
In “Don’t waste our future” (2015-2018) FAMSI mobilised local elected representatives to draft and sign a pan-European charter on the need to fight food waste that was later on presented to the EU institutions and generated an important shift in public opinion. Working on a similar topic, the project “No Planet B” has enabled FAMSI to actively involve a wide range of community players in finding innovative solutions to reduce our environmental impact such as schools, the social economy sector and private companies and the local and regional governments in the region of Andalusia.
Check the video of the project.
PLATFORMA strongly advocates for the strategic role LRGs play in informing, mobilising and articulating a community’s engagement for global sustainable development. LRGs are at the forefront of the key matters of global sustainable development and can thus importantly link the local and global challenges posed by climate change, migration flows or social inequalities. They are, moreover, strategic builders of social cohesion through active policies in support to the Civil Society, education or social sectors. See more about PLATFORMA key messages regarding the future of EU policies to support LRGs in their engagement for global sustainable development, including Development Education in our toolbox to work with local and regional governments.
(Next “EDLS story”: Cités Unies France Escape game to raise awareness on the SDGs)
(Photo by Tobi Feder on Unsplash)
