Research and Information Centre for Development

Research and Information Centre for Development (Centre de Recherche et d’information pour le développement)
Abbreviation CRID
Founded 1976
Focus Social and Ecological Justice, Development, Alternative Globalization
Location
Product Critical Research and Policy Analysis, Political Education, Capacity Building
Website http://www.crid.asso.fr/spip.php?article13

Research and Information Centre for Development (Centre de Recherche et d’information pour le développement—CRID), is a Paris-based transnational alternative policy group that produces and disseminates analyses, proposals and information tools oriented towards the enhancement of global justice and ecological heath.[1][2] Established in 1976, CRID is a founding member of the World Social Forum International Committee. Today, the Centre gathers over fifty NGO’s, producing vast amount of collaborative knowledge and is a site for popular education and social movement building.[3]

Goals and Activities

CRID sees itself as a coordinating hub for progressive French NGO’s, cultivating ‘transversal solidarities’ (coalitions across issues and identities) and pulling together a host of organizations and social movements that oppose conventional conceptions of development and working to formulate alternatives around a shared vision of global social and ecological justice.[3] Its current work on this front includes important initiatives that struggle for justice for oppressed migrant and immigrant communities in France.

Consistent with its emphasis on developing transversal solidarities and its continued involvement with and support for the World Social Forum, CRID maintains a strong commitment to bringing together and synthesize knowledge from different activist experiences and standpoints. This emphasis on knowledge production and mobilization as an empowering, democratizing process, provides the reasoning behind the various ‘platforms,’ which CRID helps to facilitate (but does not control). Platforms typically bring a set of social movements and organizations together on a common cause or particular theme, pooling knowledge in the areas of experiential exchange/knowledge integration, educational tools and methodological training. Some platforms produce collaboratively-authored papers; others are more action oriented. CRID also coordinates major popular-educational initiatives, including a bi-annual 3-4 day Summer University that is meant to train and educate activists in new issues and approaches.[1] It also publishes Altermondes, a quarterly magazine on internal solidarity, development and ecological sustainability.

CRID is a predominantly nationally-focused group, yet given its network-based method of knowledge production and through its 53 member groups that are active in solidarity work around the world, its reach is international in scope and it engages in North-South social movement building and political-cultural mediation/translation. With only a small paid staff of dedicated activists, its reach into domestic and global civil society is extensive. Its member groups partner with 1500 groups in the South and in East Europe, and with approximately 7500 local groups in France, the latter representing approximately 180,000 volunteers.[3]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Carroll, William. 2015. "Modes of Cognitive Praxis in Transnational Alternative Policy Groups". Globalizations, 1-18. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2014.1001231
  2. ↑ Carroll, William. 2014. “Alternative Policy Groups and Transnational Counter-Hegemonic Struggle.” Pp. 259-84 in Yıldız Atasoy (ed.) Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Diversity. London & New York: Palgrave MacMillan
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Collectif Sarka-SPIP. "Presentation of the CRID". crid.asso.fr.

External links