Action Plan 2008-2009

Objectives and Approach for 2008-2009

Our approach is based on underscoring the value of the Charter as an awareness-raising tool with a view to changing mentalities and behavior. The first aim is to give rise to socially responsible commitment within social and professional groups and commitment to action at an everyday level.

The European team works closely with Polis - International Network in Environmental Education, an organization set up in 1996 under Greek law.

In 2008-2009, the Charter’s European Facilitation Committee will focus primarily on the following projects:

1. International cooperation – participation in international campaigns

Our objective is to pursue and enlarge our collaboration with organizations both local and international/European in designing and implementing their campaigns (workshops, rallying days, and a number of international campaigns). We shall be working, in particular, with the following organizations:

1. The Maisons Familiales Rurales (rural vocational training centers) network in France, which provides training on the theme of "Nature Management and Conservation." This collaboration could take the form of our team’s oversight of the French students’ training workshops, during which we shall guide their research and action toward subjects related to the question of our responsibility to the environment, as we did during the workshop in 2007. The Maisons Familiales Rurales network is otherwise involved in international-cooperation projects including several European countries. The network’s representatives have committed to circulating the material we have produced on the Charter project in several European countries through these international-cooperation networks.

2. The network of the European organizations affiliated with the Fédération Internationale des Centres d’Entraînement dans les Méthodes d’Éducation Active (International Federation of Training Centers for Active Education Methods - FICEMEA), of which Polis has been a member since it was set up in 1996. In 2007, we rekindled our contacts with FICEMEA by associating with a project submitted for financing by the European Union. Regardless of whether this application is approved for funding, the FICEMEA, through its longstanding action in the field of popular education, is a network through which the Charter project can reach a large number of facilitators and educators everywhere in Europe.

3. We shall participate for the second time in the yearly “Clean up the Med” campaign coordinated by the Italian organization Legambiente, by bringing more persons and organizations into the operation, which is organized in several countries of the Mediterranean area.

4. We are also planning to participate in the world mobilization and action day organized by the World Social Forum on January 26, 2008, when the objective and program of the operation will have been specified.

2. Conception and production of communication / awareness-raising material

We shall continue producing presentation material for the project and awareness-raising material on the issue of responsibility. We are planning to produce the following material:

I. Experience reports

We shall continue writing experience reports on responsibility. Our aim is to identify and circulate "good practices" experiences on responsibilities taken by actors in a number of socioprofessional sectors. The database of the "Europe" section of the Web site already contains a large number of experience reports of this type, to which we will continue to add.

II. Publication of articles on the Charter project

We shall continue to publish articles by using the experience reports, those produced and those yet to be produced, as raw material. Our aim is to get as many articles as possible published in several southern European countries, in specialized magazines (NGO magazines and publications), as well as in local mainstream magazines and in daily newspapers.

III. Educational material for children around the concept of responsibility, in the form of tales and stories

Our contacts have once again informed us of the need for educational material presenting the question of responsibility and the Charter project, adapted for and accessible by young people, that can be used in the framework of formal education.

These will be a series of booklets, each presenting illustrated stories, along with suggestions on how teachers can exploit the content educationally. We have identified a number of traditional tales and are still searching for others; we shall then study these tales in depth and adapt them for children. We plan to publish this material during the second half of 2008.

IV. Preparation of an educational booklet on the theme "Our responsibility to the planet’s environment: the Europeans’ ecological debt"

For the preparation of the booklet on ecological debt, we have already made contacts with journalists in France and with an organization based in Holland that have worked on the same subject and have accepted to contribute to writing the booklet. The final text of the project will be published and will constitute the second issue of the series Agir Responsable (responsible action), the first issue of which was released in 2006, on the theme, "our ecological footprint and how to reduce it."

We shall also rework the booklet produced by the French students of the Maison Familiale Rurale at Mondy, who participated in one of our 2007 workshops on the theme, “water: common good - common responsibility” (click here for further details). We shall work on the content of the first version of the text, which still needs to be reorganized and given further depth on several points. The final text will be published on the Charter Web site.

3. Organization of a second series of traveling art shows

We intend to get involved again in the "art and responsibility" project with a new series of traveling art shows by inviting artists from a number of countries to join us.

Our aim is to continue the series of shows in other countries of southern Europe in 2008-2009.
Concretely, we are in contact with professors of the School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. Our aim is to involve the school’s students in the project and to organize a first show in Florence for this second stage of the project, in the spring of 2008. The works collected for the first art shows in Greece in 2007 can be shown again in Florence, then sent to Brazil to be shown along with the Brazilian Charter team’s show.
For 2009, we could pursue this project with a show in another country (probably France) by inviting artists from other countries to participate in it.

If you are interested in these projects and you wish to join our team and become actively involved in their development, you are welcome!