THE LOCAL GLOBAL INTER-REGIONAL DYNAMIC

Agricultura Familiar e Agroecologia (AS-PTA)  is a Brazilian non-profit civil law association, which, since 1983, has worked to strengthen family agriculture and promote sustainable rural development in Brazil. AS-PTA participated in developing the constitution and operates in several civil society networks aimed at promoting sustainable rural development. At the same time as they constitute spaces for collective learning, these networks propose articulated actions of organisations and movements in society to influence the creation, implementation and monitoring of public policies.

A group of women media professionals founded the Association of Women for Media and Development (TAM)  in 2003. TAM seeks to strengthen the role and status of women in Palestine and to develop free and supportive media. It also plays an important role in Palestine to include the issue of women in different sectors such as media, local governorates and infrastructure.

Caritas Armenia  was founded in 1995. The association focuses its efforts on social protection and care, community development programs aimed at improving living and educational conditions, improving public health of the most vulnerable social groups, migration and integration, and implement sustainable reintegration measures for returnees and humanitarian and development activities.

The Tambimong Ogaro Rural Animation Center (CARTO ) was established in 1982. The main objective of the current program is to improve food security in the diocese of Dapaong and strengthen the means livelihood of beneficiary families by popularizing sustainable agricultural practices adapted to climate change and soil impoverishment, and by promoting the emergence of women and men leaders in their environment.

Secours Catholique - Caritas France (SCCF)  has the mission of supporting the most vulnerable and providing a space for commitment to awakening solidarity. The association – created in 1946 – is active in France and overseas and provides support in more than 52 countries and territories in connection with the Caritas Internationalis global network. SCCF attacks all the causes of poverty, inequality and exclusion. The association challenges public opinion and public authorities and offers long-term solutions. It places at the heart of its action the participation of the people supported and the strengthening of the capacity of all to act together.

A Caravan to take the road to networked learning

A training course co-facilitated by the SCCF and AS-PTA, Brazilian partner, focused on “How to create the conditions allowing the mobilisation and emancipation of people and groups?” The discussions made it possible to discover how to use capitalisation as a driving force for a network of actors. Capitalisation is a methodological process allowing the people involved to recount their actions to reveal the knowledge they have put in place, or to learn from their experience.

Since then, the participants in the training with AS-PTA have decided to set up a Caravan project for the France network with a perspective of international exchanges. It consists of learning visits between different groups in the network to identify experiences, support the telling of these experiences and facilitate the sharing of these stories between network actors. Thus, several Caravans can be deployed in France at different scales: in a defined territory, a department, inter-departments, in region, inter-region, etc. There is one key ambition: to experience the meeting and exchange between France and Brazil. Brazilian partners will integrate into one or other of the Caravans in France and vice versa.

The Caravan is a proposed methodology that applies to different subjects or research questions such as the mobilisation of people, local advocacy, access to decent food, etc. It is a question of promoting existing approaches, in a dynamic of educational progression of the actors involved.

Giselda Nunes Beserra, president of the rural producers' union in the Borborema region of Brazil, explains in this podcast how she mobilised locally to act for women's rights and agro ecology (
iFrame link)

Co-construct a shared vision to change things locally

How to reach an agreement between the SCCF, Caritas Armenia and CARTO in Togo on just ecological transition issues? By defining a shared vision! Two events brought together nearly eighty people engaged in the three countries to co-construct a shared vision. The challenge is to contribute to local social change. Thus, under the title “Inhabitants of the same planet, let’s imagine tomorrow together”, the participants were able to agree on what we mean by “shared vision”. They also experimented with collaborative tools for co-constructing a shared vision.

“These approaches to local social change are at the heart of our project and our future,” said Adélaïde Bertrand, General Delegate of the SCCF present at one of the events. “To transform territories, actors, our society, local, regional, national… I believe in it deeply. This is our pedagogy, and it is within everyone’s reach, to get moving together,” she continued.

This dynamic then continued in each country. In Togo, CARTO continued its work to bring together farmers, breeders and foresters so that they could manage their territory together while respecting the unique characteristics of each profession. In Armenia, an event of this type was replicated in the Caritas network in order to adopt more collaborative ways of doing things to define a shared vision. In France, several actors committed to the SCCF have driven a dynamic of shared vision in local actions like the Maison Sésame in Villeurbanne which aims to be a resource place in a district of the city (Maison Sésame).

Finally, a series of podcasts “Dream your world!” was produced giving voice to different international partners to understand the challenge of defining a shared vision in an organisation:

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  Episode 1 / Edouard François from Caritas Kaolack in Senegal.
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  Episode 2 / Brother Jules from CARTO in Togo.
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  Episode 3 / Philippe Yanogo from the agro-eco program in the Sahel.
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  Episode 4 / Louisa Damigo in Brazil.

Videos to show the mobilisation of women for their rights

The Association of Women for Media and Development (TAM) produces videos to show their actions from the perspective of mobilising women for their rights in Palestine. Several videos are being produced to understand how TAM supports groups of people by enabling the development of their power to act.