The Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation (DG DEVCO/EuropeAid) of the European Commission held its traditional “staff seminar” this month, where it recognised the best communication work of the past year. In the audiovisual category, EUROsociAL participated with two videos, one of which, entitled “Democratic Governance”, received the highest recognition by all the members of EuropeAid.

The idea for filming the Democratic Governance video in Honduras was an initiative of the EUROsociAL programme for social cohesion in Latin America and the National Taxpayer Education Programme of Honduras. Children from the public schools of Tegucigalpa (Escuela República de China, Escuela Cardenal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez and Escuela República de Francia) and La Ceiba (Escuela Ramón Rosa, José Trinidad Cabañas and CEB José Trinidad Reyes) took part in its creation.

It is important to highlight that all the schools are located on the peripheries of these cities and that the children that attend them face a conflictive social environment every day, particularly in Tegucigalpa, as gang membership is a phenomenon that starts at school age. Nonetheless, despite these social problems and the poverty that surrounds them, a large part of the population is committed to education and to generating changes in governance models to favour greater inclusion of citizens.

The National Taxpayer Education Programme in Honduras, in cooperation with the Secretariat of Education, has promoted implementation of taxpayer education formally in schools to teach taxpaying culture, transparency practices and citizen rights, subjects that have been assimilated and accepted enthusiastically by children and teenagers. Proof of this can be found in the mastery of the concepts by the boys and girls who participated in the filming of the Democratic Governance video. Since its first phase, EUROsociAL has supported taxpayer education strategies in the Central American country.

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