A Guide to Social and Solidarity Economy

“Challenging the Crisis: promoting citizens’ engagement in a time of uncertainty” is a 3-year Development Education project led by IDEA, in Ireland, with partners in 5 other EU countries – Portugal, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Greece.

For IDEA, Development Education is an educational response and process aimed at increasing people’s awareness and understanding of the interdependent and unequal world we live in, through active and creative learning, debate, action and refl ection. It encourages people to think about and question the social, political and economic relations within and between the Global North and the Global South (traditionally referred to as Developing Countries) with the aim of taking action to challenge power imbalances and the unequal distribution of resources that currently exists.

Through Development Education practices, the Challenging the Crisis project engages citizens from highly indebted EU countries to increase their understanding of the interdependences of local and global justice issues and to enable them to become active advocates for global justice, supporting national and EU development policies despite austerity measures at home. The overall objective of Challenging the Crisis is to contribute to a more just and sustainable world through awareness raising and empowering EU citizens as global development advocates.

The Project Partners are: IDEA (Ireland), Fairtrade Hellas (Greece), CIPSI ‘Coordinamento di Iniziative Popolari di Solidarietà Internazionale’ (Italy), Fondazione Culturale Responsabilità Etica (Italy), Instituto Marquês de Valle Flôr (Portugal), SLOGA (Slovenia) and Fundación Economistas sin Fronteras (Spain).