COMMUNAUTÉS RÉSILIENTES (CoRe) - OUR PROGRAM
In 2021, Secours Catholique Caritas France (SCCF), the French Development Agency (AFD) and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) signed a 4-year multi-year partnership agreement that aims to promote a just ecological transition in 18 countries. This convention will support local experiments, regional approaches and global advocacy to respond to the socio-environmental crisis that is shaking the planet.
ONE AND THE SAME CRISIS
“There are not two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but a single, complex socio-environmental crisis. The possible solutions require an integral approach to combat poverty, to restore dignity to the excluded and simultaneously to preserve nature”. The words of Pope Francis in the encyclical Laudato Si inspire SCCF. Eager to fight against poverty in the four corners of the planet, the association believes that it is urgent to bring together ecological and social imperatives. Vulnerable populations are namely the first victims of the crises that shake the planet, whether social, economic or environmental. Recently the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the interconnection of our societies and the health, economic, social and environmental areas of our life. Today our mode of development generates increased pressure on natural resources as well as environmental degradation, but also the worsening of social inequalities. To respond to the challenges of climate change and poverty, we must work for social and environmental transformation.
SUPPORT LOCAL PROJECTS
This REsilient COmmunity (CoRe) was designed with 23 partners from SCCF from 18 countries around the world including from Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo), from Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru), from Central Europe and Asia (Armenia, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Vietnam), from the Middle East (Palestine), as well as France. As part of local field projects, the SCCF and its partners, supported by the AFD and the MEAE, are implementing solutions to move towards a just ecological transition. This involves agroecology projects – an agriculture that pays farmers fairly while protecting the environment, through projects to support just and sustainable cities, through the defence of the land rights of the most vulnerable such as indigenous peoples, or by the protection of environmental migrants. All these local projects have the same objective: to reduce inequalities and fight against poverty while protecting the environment.
STRENGTHEN THE POWER TO ACT...
In total, 170,000 men and women as well as 1,300 local leaders will benefit from the CoRe initiatives within a total budget of more than 12 million Euros. The program is an opportunity to strengthen the power to act of the poorest since solutions can only come from and with communities. We must listen to them! The CoRe therefore also aims to strengthen the capacities of populations and partners to promote collectively a vision of a just ecological transition. Exchange of experience and capitalization will thus make it possible, during the 4 years of the program, to raise awareness of the know-how of populations and to draw lessons from it to propose a common vision of a just ecological transition. For example, parallels could be drawn between indigenous peoples of Latin America and Asia in their cultural practices that defend biodiversity.
…TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM
Ultimately, SCCF intends to provide a vision in terms of justice and an environment that it can defend before local, regional and even international authorities with a view to change public policies. SCCF wants to achieve a common positioning leading to systemic and structural changes beyond local and regional projects that respond to social and environmental justice. Two French research partners namely CIEDEL (International Centre for Local Development Studies) and GEMDEV (Scientific Network for the Study of Globalization and Development) are supporting this process of reaching a common position of a just ecological transition.