Awareness-raising and development education

They also aim to ensure that from an ear­ly age mem­bers of the pub­lic acquires the knowl­edge and skills need­ed to under­stand and engage in crit­i­cal think­ing about the caus­es and con­se­quences of pover­ty, and take an active role in the devel­op­ment of fair­er and more inclu­sive societies.

Projects and pro­grammes are guid­ed by the exper­tise of NGOs, acquired through expe­ri­ence in the field, as well as by Agen­da 2030 and the 17 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, to account for the com­plex­i­ty of the chal­lenges of our soci­ety in its social, eco­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dimen­sions. These include inequal­i­ties, human rights, gen­der equal­i­ty, food sov­er­eign­ty, the pro­mo­tion of a cul­ture of peace and non-vio­lence, cli­mate change, pro­duc­tion chains, etc.

Nation­al NGOs there­fore play an essen­tial role in the imple­men­ta­tion of aware­ness-rais­ing and devel­op­ment edu­ca­tion activ­i­ties in Lux­em­bourg. In 2021, for exam­ple, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion co-financed 12 annu­al projects and 13 three-year frame­work agree­ments with a total bud­get of EUR 2 207335.14.

In order to pro­mote cit­i­zen involve­ment, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion also pro­motes joint ini­tia­tives and cam­paigns between NGOs on spe­cif­ic devel­op­ment themes as well as on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in gen­er­al. With­in this frame­work, the MFA allo­cat­ed an amount of EUR 724449.85 (100% co-financ­ing rate) to two imple­ment­ing man­dates in the field of aware­ness-rais­ing and devel­op­ment edu­ca­tion: the Third World Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre (CITIM) and the ​“Rethink your clothes” campaign.

The MFA has con­tin­ued to pro­vide financ­ing under CITIM’s man­date to ASTM, which has since 1982 been pro­vid­ing spe­cialised doc­u­men­ta­tion and edu­ca­tion on the coun­tries of the South, North-South rela­tions and human devel­op­ment. This doc­u­men­ta­tion is made avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic in the form of a library. Since 1 Jan­u­ary 2015, the min­istry has pro­vid­ed 100% of the fund­ing for CITIM. In addi­tion, since 2020 the NGOs Fair­trade Lëtze­buerg and Fon­da­tion Car­i­tas Lux­em­bourg have had a man­date to imple­ment the sec­ond phase of the Rethink your clothes cam­paign, which aims to raise pub­lic aware­ness of social and eco­log­i­cal chal­lenges in the tex­tile industry.

In the area of nation­al aware­ness-rais­ing and devel­op­ment edu­ca­tion poli­cies, the MFA has main­tained its rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Inter­min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee on Edu­ca­tion in Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (CIEDD) with a view to defin­ing guide­lines for inte­grat­ing edu­ca­tion about sus­tain­able devel­op­ment into all lev­els of Luxembourg’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The CIEDD seeks to coor­di­nate these efforts with key insti­tu­tion­al stake­hold­ers and civ­il soci­ety actors. In this con­text, the Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs was also rep­re­sent­ed at the events of the Glob­al Edu­ca­tion Net­work Europe (GENE), with a view to improved mutu­al learn­ing and net­work­ing of the actors involved in devel­op­ment edu­ca­tion across Europe and in Luxembourg.