Institute

The Research and Information Centre for Development (Centre de Recherche et d’Information pour le Développement, CRID) was founded by eight associations in 1976. It was created to strengthen public awareness for issues related to development policy and international cooperation. Today the CRID already consists of 50 French associations for international solidarity. These associations are characterised by the following features:

• They share the idea of how the development of humankind can be shaped sustainably and solidly by strengthening civil society.
• They cooperate in a network of 1,500 associates who support on-site development in southern countries or Eastern Europe.
• In France, they implement measures for development education work and support citizen campaigns.
• They are involved in the creation of a worldwide movement for international solidarity and try to popularise this movement in France.

The members of the CRID form a network of 180,000 volunteers in 7,500 local groups in France. The CRID officially advises the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The associations for international solidarity of the CRID show active commitment to development education work. Primarily, it is the local groups of the associations who sensitise the public this way. With their development education work, the CRID associations pursue the following goals:

• They want to help the public to understand the complexity of the world. This includes the following three facets:

1. understanding and recognising that everybody is an individual who is part of one or several groups that have their own, sometimes contradictory logic
2. being aware of the interactions between decisions of political and economic actors and understanding their impacts on the entire world population
3. seeing the importance of certain issues in the global context

• After that, the CRID associations want to convince the public with regard to the complexity mentioned above to take an active part in the creation of a world that shows solidarity. They suggest the following methods:

1. specific individual actions as a citizen, consumer, employee or taxpayer in order to change the own, direct surroundings or that of others
2. collective actions such as campaigns of public opinion or commitment in one of our associations