Do you know what it is like to grow up in today's social neighborhoods of Portugal?Do you know what are the dreams of the youth that inhabits the outskirts of the Lisbon metropolis?We set ourselves to create a common space of communication and exchange amongst people from different neighborhoods in Lisbon with the purpose of building a shared language that deconstruct prejudice and cultural indifference creating belonging and dialogue between two distant realities.

In different settings of periferic and non-periferic outskirts of Lisbon, Portugal.

We intend to address invisibility and access; deconstruct the image that one’s have from each other and eliminating the stigma existent towards periferic neighborhoods and minorities. The challenge is to include the perspective of minorities within the public policy making. Lisbon is a city considered to be multicultural, nonetheless the reality of minorities and ethnic groups is different from the mainstream reality. Hence, the challenge is to address everything that is unknown or silenced and rupture the cycle of prejudiced approach and behaviour and the idea of non-access to opportunities, active democratic participation and public policy making to minority communities. Promoting the recognition of the minorities participation in the construction of a multicultural Lisbon.

This is an initiative created by the community and executed by the community. Its is us that will invite other stakeholders. We are doing it because we have perspectives that are constantly undermined because they are not mainstream. Our communities are responsible for the creation of different epicenters in Lisbon that others must know. We feel the daily invisibility of our struggles, silence of our obstacles and lack of access to participative life as a block on our road to social and urban mobility. We believe that, more than anyone, we know how it feels and we want to have a voice and say in our democracy so we can address what can be done to change whilst creating spaces of debate, knowledge sharing and solutions about Lisbon in a mutual way.

1Identifying synergies amongst non-periferic stakeholders;
2Conduct a research to grasp what people would like to show from their community and life context as well as to know from the others;
3Couch Revolution: a deconstructed platform of debates about the main topics needed in order to create a shared language around understanding equity, inclusion principles and urban divisions.
4Imaginary Distances Documentary - a collection of daily life episodes that portray the constructed common visions.
5Non-formal education experiment - conceptualization of the ideas and results into a training program that creates intercultural capacity, social awareness and inclusion, strengthening of public policy critical thinking and active citizenship.
6Final Community Revealing Events

We will create a chain of events and moments that potentiate the empowerment of a more open minded and conscious citizenship. It will be created an academic publication. We will have an evaluation of the audiences addressed within the project to ensure an increase in awareness of the reality experienced by some; we will measure the ability to be more empathetic and able to understand and change prejudiced behaviour. The dialogue will be established and allow a truthful participation of this part of the population in the public life affairs, taking stage on a democratic and social innovation fronts.The documentary will allow the community to see themselves as actors of change and not mere recipients of help abling them to take a stance.

"No one can tell our narratives and reflect our stories as well as we can". Therefore, our project idea intends to tackle the root causes of social exclusion and absence of critical thinking regarding populism and prejudice by depicting daily life in the periferic neighborhoods of urban areas and within the local minority communities of afrodescendents and Roma, promoting a deconstruction of concepts in a bottom-up approach. Our idea will provide knowledge, ideas and innovation from a community and local level that will allow a new look on previous ethnocentric perspectives and promote engagement from both parts in creating a more aware, conscious, active and participative citizenship that will strengthen democracy and policy making in the country and in diverse Europe all around.

We want to be change makers. We know stigma and we want to address it by showing what it entails and causes. We want to create awareness so we can educate towards change and know the other side of the narrative. Our motivation comes from our community engagement path that has brought more and more fronts for us to address. We want to exchange our experience and common shared humanity to create common understanding. Our goal is to open the opportunities to those who don't have them in order to create a more participative democracy and equity society where our voice and life is taken under consideration. We are motivated by social innovation that brings about change into people's lives. Our future is ours to create and our network of partners trust us to lead it.

human resources 22740 EUR
subcontracts 4430 EUR
training and events 2000 EUR
instruments and technical equipment 3220 EUR
demonstration, promotion, public relations and publication 6300 EUR
service procurement and acquisitions 4100 EUR
overheads and other materials 2090 EUR
office expenses 600 EUR,
travel and accommodation costs 2000 EUR,

We would like to have some input on the good practices that could inspire some of our work with the community and as well the propelling of our activities into other platforms and contexts that can help spread the idea of demystifying several misconceptions of reality. All is welcomed.