EUNET and Development Education
(Widening the scope: Europe and the world)

Development Education: a common strategy for EUNET and other European networks in the field of development co-operation.

What is development education and awareness raising?

Development co-operation consists of (at least) two important parts.

• One of them is the aid directed at people in developing countries via different kinds of projects, that will help increase their standard of living.
• The other part is the important work being done in our home countries. Activities can be focussed on different target groups:

- politicians at local, regional, national and European level (lobbying and advocacy work for development experts).

- the wider public: journalists as well as individuals in their function as consumers or voters (efforts targeted at them are classified as awareness raising and campaigning and would be noticed (amongst others) by brochures, advertising, articles in newspapers and on homepages, special activities towards specific smaller target groups -e.g. exhibitions, fairs, discussion events, theatre pieces, protest-marches, workshops, seminars- and many more).

- the final target group to be identified here are stakeholders regarding formal and informal education systems (their work is devoted to introducing new (better) schemes for the educational systems itself, which would be in corporate learning about international dependencies and how the actions of the planet's inhabitants influence all different people close and far away.

You will find one of the many definitions of development education available below:

Development Education is an active learning process which enables people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world, in a changing global society that is multicultural and interdependent.

Development Education aims to raise awareness and understanding of how global issues affect the lives of individuals, communities and societies and how all of us can and do influence the global society we live in. It aims to bring global perspectives into all aspects of learning – from the school classroom to universities to local community activities to the media.

Development Education aims to:
Enable people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world; Increase understanding of the economic, social, political  and environmental forces which shape our lives; Develop skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change and take control of their own lives; Work towards achieving a more just and sustainable world in which power and resources are more equitably shared.