Go Green’s approach to social and economic inclusion of informal waste pickers Up to 90% of the recycled paper, plastic and metal is collected by the informal waste pickers in North Macedonia. The entire waste management system relies on these invisible worker bees. When we say invisible, it is actually seen from the eyes of the system. There is no formal trace of a transaction and everything goes in cash. But for the regular citizen, everyone can witness thousands of waste pickers, mostly from the Roma community, that are putting their hands and heads in the containers every day, looking for plastic bottles or other valuable resources. This has been their professional occupation for decades. Go Green has started working on the issue of green jobs in 2017. It started with the green jobs potential in the energy sector and the lack of workers in the construction sector (which is also a huge social and economic challenge), but it ended up in exploring and finding solutions for in...

For our Bremen partnership meeting three pupils from Gymnasium Nordhorn prepared a survey among their comrades about exchange and swapping habits. It shows that ideas of Exchange Economy are quite present among the age group and that the young people have strong ideas what to change and what not. The presentation pictures are presented here. The three students made interviews with 177 young persons . We regret very much that - due to the Corona travel restrictions - we could not hold our meeting. Tim, Rudel and Tom, the authors of the survey, were prepared to present and discuss their work at one of the sessions and to assist in various other ways during our meeting procedures. The school were they study had organized a special "Week of Challenges" where the pupils were asked to look for some project activity to join and to report about. They had chosen the contribution to our partnership work and we thank them very much for this initative and courage...

Disability can be viewed in different ways, each with different emancipation potentials for people with disabilities. In Portuguese society, disability has been reduced to the in-capacities of the bodies and to a fatalistic narrative of personal tragedy. According to this understanding model, therestrictionsandobstaclesexperiencedbypeoplewithdisabilitiesresultdirectlyfromtheirsupposedfunctionallimitations. Suchconceptionshavevalidatedtheconstructionoftheimageofpeoplewithdisabilities as passive and dependent subjects, the silencing of their voices and fed oppressive and excluding social policies of people with disabilities in Portugal. This essay aims to open a reflection on this reality, in order to contribute to a cultural and socio-political questioning of the phenomena of minorization, oppression, poverty and social exclusion experienced by people with disabilities in Portuguese society and for the construction of new emancipatory paths. The full inclusion of citizens with disab...

The concept of ‘collaborative economy’, named also as ‘sharing’ or ‘crowd-based economy’ can be defined as an ‘economic opportunity for individuals to trade their underutilized assets with other individuals through intermediaries that match supply and demand in an efficient way’. [1] Romania is far from being a progressive player in the platform of collaborative economy, demonstrated by the statistics (52% of the surveyed Romanians have never heard of collaborative platforms). [2] However, according to researchers, it is something that will develop over the years, due to the fact, that in Romania ‘there is hyper-consumption based on the idea of owning things, things that are not needed and which people probably will not use too often. The collaborative economy can correct this’. [3] It is evident that the influence of Western countries is noticeable. AirBnb, the example of peer-to-peer economy   is already popular across Romania, Uber and Blablacar are widely used car shari...

Talking about experiences of collaborative economy that were promoted by Associazione Uniamoci Onlus, the main example is the organization of SWAP PARTIES. At a  Swap Party , a group of people get together to swap items – from clothes to toys, books to sports equipment. Swap Parties make acquiring new things into a fun, interactive event, which also reduces our environmental impact through recycling products: reusing a product, rather than buying a new one, reduces the demands for water, energy and raw materials. This reduces the impact on the environment. We usually organize it twice a year from 4 years already, one at the beginning of spring and one at the beginning of winter. We also created a  wall of kindness,  that is a wall   where people can leave   clothes   they are not using anymore, so that the people in need have the possibility to freely take what they like. Talking about “ Collaborative learning ”, in our organi...

The European Union information about Collaborative Economy, which was even the main reference in the application for our partnership is found at https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/services/collaborative-economy_en . In Germany, the most summarizing official position paper was published 2015 by the Federal Agency for Environment (Umweltbundesamt) under the title “Nutzen statt Besitzen” (“Using instead of Owning”) to be found here https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/378/publikationen/uib_03_2015_nutzen_statt_besitzen_0.pdf (German Only). There is until now no German translation of “C.E.” in official use (no singular case, often German politics or social discussion use English terms without translation), as concepts like “Tauschwirtschaft”, “Gemeinwohlwirtschaft”, “Kreislaufwirtschaft” or “Sozialwirtschaft” are used either in wider, in smaller or quite different definitions. After some discussion with our project stakeholders at Bremen we use “ Wirtscha...