TUDCN brochure "Trade unions as actors of development education and awareness raising for global solidarity"

A new TUDCN brochure puts forward the role and added value that trade unions have in development education and awareness raising.

The involvement of trade unions in development cooperation has been going on for many decades and is now recognised and increasingly known, but it is only recently that trade unions have been acknowledged as actors in development in their own right. A less known façade of trade union work is that on Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR).

Workers’ education has been at the core of trade union efforts since their creation, and awareness raising has always been one of the key actions of trade unions in the form of organising, campaigning, etc. DEAR interventions have therefore been going on for many decades within trade unions, in the context of international solidarity actions with colonised peoples, against dictatorships and against apartheid, among others. This work has been evolving towards more elaborate forms of DEAR actions and programmes that show a great expertise on the part of trade unions on the subject.

Trade unions understand DEAR to be a form of engagement with citizens and workers in order to educate and raise awareness on the realities in partner countries, and to put forward common responses to common problems, through increased international solidarity.

Read the brochure here English, French and Spanish