{"id":25423,"date":"2013-02-11T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=25423"},"modified":"2013-02-06T15:53:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T15:53:43","slug":"this-is-what-a-humane-economy-looks-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/02\/this-is-what-a-humane-economy-looks-like\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is What a Humane Economy Looks Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

The severe crisis crippling Spain is also sparking some creative responses, such the Okonom\u00eda project, a teaching initiative that helps individuals and communities to understand the workings of the economy and make more informed decisions to manage their finances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings have gotten so bad, with people out of work, losing their homes and watching their savings vanish, that something has to be done to economically empower people,\u201d said activist Ra\u00fal Contreras, one of the academics behind this initiative that in February will open its first school in Benimaclet, a multicultural neighbourhood in the southeastern city of Valencia.<\/p>\n

Contreras \u2013 an economist who also heads the company Nitt\u00fa<\/a>a, which sponsors this project \u2013 spoke with IPS about the powerlessness and fear that is taking hold of many people who do not understand how the economy works and how it affects their lives, and are thus made vulnerable to manipulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoubts, ignorance and fear \u2013 in some cases spread intentionally \u2013 lead to mistakes, anxiety and difficult situations that could be avoided if people are better informed and equipped to make decisions or choices,\u201d Nitt\u00faa\u2019s website reads.<\/p>\n

One out of every four economically active persons is currently unemployed in Spain, where dozens of families are evicted daily from their homes for failure to meet their mortgage payments, and the measures implemented by the right-wing government of Mariano Rajoy to address the crisis involve huge cuts to health, education and other basic services.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of people in Spain fell prey to \u201cpreferential shares\u201d and other financial product schemes and lost all their savings. As the crisis deepened and banks became desperate for cash, they convinced more and more savers to buy these products, taking advantage of their lack of understanding of the ins and outs of investment, and using misleading and distorted sales pitches.<\/p>\n

Okonom\u00eda \u2013 which is financing its start-up needs through a crowdfunding campaign<\/a>\u00a0– calls itself a \u201cpopular economics school\u201d that \u201cdevelops dialectical educational processes, building on the reality and economic knowledge of each participant, to enable participants to understand their economic situation so that they can make informed and conscious decisions, both individually and collectively, that will lead to the transformation of society through economic empowerment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school is formed by professionals from the fields of economics and education and its activities include training multiplying agents who will spread their newly-acquired knowledge in their immediate social environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school won\u2019t solve people\u2019s problems, but it will provide a toolbox to help individuals make more informed decisions based on their specific needs,\u201d Contreras explained, highlighting the project\u2019s cross-cutting approach to solidarity economy, as it emphasises sustainable alternatives.<\/p>\n

While the head of Nitt\u00faa stresses the solidarity aspect of this economic model, he says it is not the school\u2019s intent to preach any one model or solution. Rather it seeks to give participants an understanding of economics in general, including a range of economic alternatives, such as ethical banking, responsible consumption, fair trade and the cooperative model.<\/p>\n

\u201cA large part of society has realised that a different way of teaching economics is needed,\u201d Carlos Ballesteros, a lecturer on consumer behaviour at Madrid\u2019s Comillas Pontifical University, told IPS. \u201cNinety-nine percent of the world\u2019s business schools stick close to the neoliberal paradigm,\u201d which is profit-driven and based on maximising earnings.<\/p>\n

Ballesteros said that while Okonom\u00eda\u2019s target public is civil society as a whole and its main objective is to teach and inform, on the understanding that \u201cthe economy is everyone\u2019s responsibility,\u201d it also aims to gather and systematise knowledge on solidarity economy practices that may prove useful to people working in that field.<\/p>\n

Okonom\u00eda offers semester courses, with in-person classes held every two weeks. The methodology is based on the popular education model developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997), who believed that \u201cto teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In each session an issue is presented and material is provided to facilitate reflection. \u201cThe learning process is a group activity. The classes are not lectures, but rather dialogue-based and interactive,\u201d Contreras said.<\/p>\n

He added that after each session the conclusions drawn from the group\u2019s discussions are published online and posted in an intranet, which will form a database of the school\u2019s results, a sort of \u201cWikipedia of Popular Economy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Economist Arcadi Oliveres, one of Okonom\u00eda\u2019s advisers, said this project is valuable because it \u201cseeks to reveal to the people the underlying workings of the economy\u201d and \u201cbecause we\u2019re really in the dark\u201d when it comes to the financial world, he told IPS.<\/p>\n

Oliveres, a professor of applied economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, believes that \u201cpeople don\u2019t know that there are alternatives to the traditional economic system\u201d and calls for critically aware citizens who can make informed decisions.<\/p>\n

Independently of how financial markets and governments behave, the actions of common citizens also have an impact on the economy, so that people must be conscious that they too can make irresponsible choices as consumers or that their deposits can go to financing environmentally-harmful corporate activities, the economist argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to start asking ourselves where our money goes \u2013 what do I do with my savings, where do I deposit them and why? \u2013 and learn to take control of our finances,\u201d Contreras said.<\/p>\n

The aim of the school is to help people \u201cunderstand and then make free, but conscious decisions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The expert noted that he has not found similar projects anywhere else in the world and that Okonom\u00eda, which combines a methodology inspired by Paulo Freire with social innovation methods, has the potential to be replicated outside of Spain \u201cwith the support of the social fabric of neighbourhoods and communities\u201d.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ipsnews.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The severe crisis crippling Spain is also sparking some creative responses, such the Okonom\u00eda project, a teaching initiative that helps individuals and communities to understand the workings of the economy and make more informed decisions to manage their finances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}