OBSERVA.FES is an observatory for Ethical and Solidarity Finance in Portugal. An online space, where people from different contexts interact, work and learn together to promoting, disseminating and developing Ethical and Solidarity Finances in Portugal. It’ll help the national economy during and after the current pandemic, through co-creation, sharing and advancement in the knowledge and action of Ethical and Solidarity Finance,contributing to its theoretical, practical and legal conceptualizion

The OBSERVA.FES project will take place all over Portugal, because it is an online-based idea.

The theoretical and practical knowledge of ethical and solidarity finance in Portugal is weak, not only at the civil society level, but also at the government level as well. Because of that, there is no legal structure for ethical and solidarity finances, no representative indicators of the impact and weight of ethical and solidary financing in the Portuguese economy, nor any real ethical and solidarity finance initiatives. Portugal has 71.885 social economy organizations, 6,7% of unemployed, 21,6% of resident population at risk of poverty or social exclusion and more than 2,5 millions of over-indebted that could be helped by ethical and solidarity finance, but they are not, because in Portugal doesn’t exist ethical and solidarity finance.

The OBSERVA.FES idea will affect different types of beneficiaries: academic community, 3rd sector organizations, lower-income people, over-indebted, Portuguese economy and Portuguese society. After the theoretical conceptualization improvement, the knowledge achieved will be transfer to civil society to improving the financial literacy of the Portuguese and empowering the most vulnerable ones, like lower-income and over-indebted, to be able to make conscience financial decisions. The creation of financial flows of ethical and solidarity finance indicators and the design of a legal structure for this type of financing will have a direct impact on the recovery of the national economy, which is being very disturbed by the actual pandemic and benefit the entire Portuguese society.

The OBSERVA.FES project proposes to develop a set of online activities. 3 online debate tables will be developed, composed by people from different contexts like multidisciplinary specialists, teachers, organizations, civil society to establish the concepts of Ethical and Solidarity Finance and design the legal framework that would allow the function of this type of finance in Portugal. 3 public online seminars will be promoted, also with multidisciplinary specialists, for all people interested in this theme. To promote financial literacy, 5 informal online training actions about financial management will be developed for and to support the over-indebted families and micro-enterprises. The materialization of all this work will be enshrined in an online magazine of public access.

Through OBSERVA.FES idea we hope by the end of project funding we have contributed to the theoretical consolidation of the concepts of ethical and solidarity finance and associated concepts, but also contributed to its dissemination and proliferation by Portuguese society. We hope to have designed the legal framework that allows ethical and solidarity finance to fully function in Portugal and to have created indicators capable of measuring the impact and weight of ethical and solidarity finance on the Portuguese economy. We also hope to have helped Portuguese over-indebted families to get out of this situation, with our help, while contributing to the improvement of Portuguese and European financial literacy.

The OBSERVA.FES project is a place of collaboration with the purpose of promoting, disseminating and developing Ethical and Solidarity Finances in Portugal. It is an online space where people from different backgrounds will interact, work and learn together for the theoretical, practical and legal conceptualization of Ethical and Solidarity Finance. The promotion, the dissemination and the development require the academic knowledge is shared with civil society, so one of the purposes of OBSERVA.FES is the citizens’ engagement and participation through public online seminars and informal online training actions. In this way, this project idea aims to provide civil society with the basic knowledge of ethical and solidarity finance, empowering it for conscious financial decision-making.

Ethical and Solidarity Finance are very important to me. On the one hand, because they are my area of expertise in the academic field, and on the other hand, because I am a defender of their existence as a way of balancing any economy. At the same time, FESCOOP – the organization that will develop this idea – was founded to make available to all ethical and solidary finances. Although in my opinion this type of finance is very important and works in other EU countries, Portugal still has a long way to go before ethical and solidary finance are implemented. That said, combining my motivation and FESCOOP's motivation, I believe that we will be the ideal team to develop this idea of the project and to make unprecedented progress in ethical and solidarity finance in Portugal.

The major expenses of OBSERVA.FES will the human resources, the implementation and the communication of the project idea. The human resources working on the project costs 30.000€; The implementation of online debate tables, public online seminars and informal online training costs 10.000€ and the communication, dissemination and marketing of the project costs 10.000€.

We would like to receive ideas that can improve our project idea. For example, suggestions for the experts that will be participating in the online debate tables and the public online seminars; suggestions about relevant topics of discussion; suggestions about the best communication platforms to use