Citizenship Academy celebrates ten years of existence on May 15th and, next Tuesday, at 9:30 pm, in partnership with “Setenta e Quatro”, we talk online around the question “do we live in the safest country in the world or on CMTV?”

The Citizenship Academy motto was launched by the people who organized the Geração à Rasca Protest, on March 12, 2011, which inaugurated a new form of citizen participation in Europe, by being called on social media and without party or institutional support.

Just over a year later, on May 15, 2012, the Citizenship Academy was registered, with the aim of boosting active citizenship and building roots of development with principles of social, economic and environmental sustainability.

The anniversary celebration will take place next Tuesday, at 9:30 pm, in a conversation broadcast live on Citizenship Academy Facebook. Participation will be open to the public, via Zoom.

The organization of the last session of the second season of #neveragain Talks, which aims to dismantle fallacious arguments from the far right, takes place in partnership with the digital information project Setenta e quatro. Guests will be Cláudia Marques Santos, freelance journalist, and Ana Rita Alves, anthropologist. And, moderating, Ricardo Cabral Fernandes (Journalist at Setenta e Quatro) and João Biscaia (essays editor at Setenta e Quatro).

Ten years of intervention for human rights, climate justice and citizenship

Since 2012, the association has organized many awareness-raising, mobilization, networking and community work activities. It involved 113 partners across the country, but also in Romania, Austria, Spain, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, among others. From social intervention projects to communication and awareness campaigns, lobbying and political advocacy, to demonstrations, including gatherings and training for adults, young people and children, in schools and beyond.

The local work took place mainly in neighbourhoods in Lisbon and surrounding areas, including two community projects using street football, in Quinta do Cabrinha, where our headquarters are located – a community that relocated the inhabitants of the former Casal Ventoso.

Citizenship Academy was at the origin of the “Morar em Lisboa” platform, which raised public opinion and political debate on the need for a national and local housing policy. He developed national lobbying and political advocacy work, worked with dozens of partners and researchers from various areas. This project contributed decisively to placing the right to housing and the right to the city on the agenda of the media and government bodies, leading to the creation of the State Department of Housing and the drafting of the Basic Law on Housing.

The association’s work was also very visible in collecting signatures for European Citizens’ (legislative) Initiatives, both around the “right to housing” and against free trade agreements (CETA and TTIP), with more than 30 000 signatures in Portugal.

One of the projects that managed to achieve its objectives was the “Campanha Linha Vermelha”, which set out to knit and crochet against fossil fuel prospecting and exploration contracts in Portugal. Over the course of four years, more than two thousand people across the country knitted 1,200 meters of Red Thread. Today, it is available to the climate justice movement and is a hallmark of climate demonstrations in Portugal. This campaign is part of the movement for climate justice in Portugal, which managed to see 15 contracts for prospecting and exploring fossil fuels in the country cancelled. This victory was fundamental to show that social mobilization has a lot of power to influence decision-making, as we believe and make a reality at Citizenship Academy.