By Toufa Ameur Hadad and Délie Romain-Quéchon

Education in Territorial Cooperation Practices through Culture and SSE
COOPTERR is a strategic partnership project with the support of the Erasmus+ program for adults education.

This project consists in combining cultural, social, economic and territorial dimensions. It brings together organizations that promote territorial cooperation through the exchange of knowledge, practices, collaborative cultural projects or territorial networks of organizations of the social and solidarity economy

The project aims to develop training on territorial cooperation practices, in order to help professionals and volunteers of these organizations.

Rethink, innovate and improve the impact of territoral development and culture

The six European partners are involved, through COOPTER, in an exciting adventure of 28 months in order to exchange knowledge, practices and experiences around territorial cooperation with the aim of inspire each other in this field.

After a first online training which lasted 3 days and hosted 25 participants from different European countries, the COOPTER team met again early July, but this time face to face in Lisbon (Portugal) for the second training activity and workshops offering SSE practitioners the keys and tools to face the challenges of territories and sustainable development. Each workshop was an opportunity to meet in a privileged environment and conducive to exchanges.

Partners

RIPESS-Europe, UFISC (France), CRIES (Romania), LARGO-Residencias (Portugal), FEKETE-Sereg (Hungary), Solidarius (Italy).

Day #1: Visits

Visits of territorial projects created by the community and for the community that show a strong spirit of initiative among local citizens in order to defend their rights of belonging:

  • New Nation Square: The street are Ours
  • Solidarity Market

And let’s not forget culture and art, which is the best way to express ourselves and share our points of view and which encourages us to know each other, to recognize each other and to respect each other despite our differences.

Day #2: Private sessions

This second day was dedicated to discussions between participants about their organization, their objectives, their visions and perspectives…the exchange of experiences and points of view….The highlighting of the contributions that have been made. We also met the partners of the festival and discussed how they cooperated within their territory in order to set up such a cultural event.

Day #3: Public sessions

  • Public Sessions with Lisbon City Council (CML): Culture Department and Local Development
    A day full of learning and inspiration with the meeting of the impressive local initiatives launched in Lisbon, that aim at local and sustainable development for future generations.

  • Local Development Game: a very fun game that consists in working in sub-teams and showing innovation and team spirit in order to set up together a project with a social vocation through a set of pre-determined objectives.