A joint-short term staff training event aimed at strengthening the cooperation among the professionals, educators,  social workers and volunteers who compose the project team of Collaborative Economy without Barriers. It was managed as a concrete collaborative workshop for the exchange of   practical tools, activities and useful tips among the participants about how to structure the project local activities and the project method more in general. So the participants cooperated in the actual planning of how to manage the following activities with adult learners with disability:  how to structure learning sessions about communication; h ow to develop self-awareness; h ow to manage art production workshops; h ow to instruct the learners in writing a profile in collaborative economy platforms and how to manage it; how to prevent r isks about the use of online platforms; how to support the users to prevent dangers; h ow to organize the collaborative economy ev...

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...

A few days ago the kick-off meeting of the project was held in Palermo. A good occasion for the partner to meet and to get to know the organization Go Green, new entry in their network! A fruitful moment to deepen the project features and to plan in detail the next local and transnational activities, starting to develop ideas about how to make Collaborative Economy accessible for people with disability. Here some photos about the meeting and the working group: