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New ways of communicating can help promote social inclusion Photo: ETF/EUP Images
“One of our city’s programmes on youth empowerment addresses youth not only as a specific age group, but also as a specific community,” she said. Returning to Truszczyński’s poverty figures, Ilda Figueiredo, vice-chair of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs in the European Parliament, expressed dissatisfaction that the original aim of “eradicating poverty” set by the Lisbon targets, which has not been achieved, has been diluted to “a reduction by 20 million” in the Europe 2020 strategy. “Only full eradication of poverty is good enough as a target for the European Union,” she said.
have no secondary education and one million of them did not even finish primary education. Less than one-third of young people have a university degree, against 40% in the US,” he added. Bigger equalities, bigger problems So, should we take the US as an example? Clearly not, argued Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket who delivered the strongest argument in favour of making a clear distinction between eradicating social exclusion and embracing social inclusion.
These are related, with a striking accuracy, to income differences, and not to GDP as such.” “The intuition that inequality is socially corrosive appears to be true,” Wilkinson concluded drily. Wilkinson and Pickett are no doomsayers however. They have extended their research into the realm of solutions, concluding that there are different roads towards greater equality.
“all the major problems in society get bigger as inequalities get bigger”
Also László Andor, the European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, chose to take the angle of critical self-reflection, noting that the EU is not just a common market but also a defender of social values.
Richard Wilkinson said that that their extensive research had shown that all the major problems in society get bigger as inequalities get bigger.
“Although poverty statistics in the EU are lower than in most surrounding countries, there is no need to be proud,” he said. “A quarter of 15-year-olds cannot read properly, six million people aged 18-25
“In terms of the benefits of economic growth, we seem to have reached the end of the road,” he said. “Despite being rich, we experience decreasing mental health and an increase in a number of problems.
“Sweden has used a redistribution of wealth through tax, while Japan has smaller differences before tax,” Wilkinson said. “The important thing is that it does not seem to matter at all how more equality is achieved. The results are the same; all parties including the rich benefit from more equality.” Which brings us back to the theme of the conference and its aims, which ETF director Madlen Serban so accurately summed up when she said: “We desire equality but we should not interpret equality as similarity. Quite the contrary: we are here to celebrate diversity.”
Social inclusion is a celebration of diversity, according to ETF Director Madlen Serban (right)
“We believe that discussing social inclusion is discussing diversity. We are here to try to disrupt the patterns of marginalisation. This audience, with policy makers, industry representatives, education experts and indeed parents, represents the entire range of institutions that can solve problems in this field. Let’s do it!” ■
Photo: ETF/EUP Images
Words: Ard Jongsma, ICE April 2011
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05/04/2011 16:44:44