RIPESS Europe announces a new project on Youth and Ethical Finance financed by the Erasmus + funds of the European Union. This project, which has just started and will run until February 2023, aims to promote ethical and solidarity finance – especially in the European Mediterranean region – by pointing out the importance of keeping our savings in entities that invest in social projects rather than in armaments or speculative economics.
On the other hand, this project has been created by and for young people, as it has emerged from a participatory process following an activity carried out at the World Social Forum with different young people from around the world who saw the need to focus on what we do with our money as one of the tools for social transformation. We want to emphasize, therefore, that at no time it is intended to have a paternalistic approach to groups of young people, but to involve them in the process actively so that we all understand ethical finance as a process of collective empowerment.
Thus, we propose to develop a training program aimed at young people who want to learn more about Ethical and Solidarity Finance and who are interested in organizing for activism and transformation. This training program will be available free of charge for individuals, but also for organizations or movements that want to take advantage of the materials to give trainings or courses. At the end of the project, these materials will be available online, but we will also have a face-to-face moment in Barcelona to which we will invite different groups of people.
This project will be coordinated by our Portuguese member APDES, but Economistsa sin Fronteras, the Ethical Finance Foundation, Scomondo, Dock and Animar are also part of it. In this sense, it is a project that involves both organizations that are experts in Ethical Finance and others that work more directly with young people and SSE activism. RIPESS Europe, will have the role of giving an international vision and connection with the European continent.
The first activity of this project will take place next July 7th in Rome, where our member Scomondo will host us to have our first International Meeting and start organizing the phases of the project.
With this project we want therefore to work for a critical financial education, to organize together to stop investing our savings in speculative economy and in financial assets that bring profits only to a few, and to promote an Ethical Banking that invests in real economy, in social and environmentally profitable projects. Finally, we want to point out how conventional banking excludes many people from access to money and monetary systems, from migrants and racialized people, women and trans or non-binary people to young people.
Follow us on social media and stay tuned to our website to see the different phases of the project.
