Desription of A3S

The organization´s mission

Association of Consumer Organisations in Slovakia is an independent, citizen´s association that was established in 1999. The organization merges 9 consumer organizations and 19 clubs in different regions in the Slovak Republic.

The main aim of the association´s activies is to help the citizens to protect the consumer rights and interests. The association advices consumers how to claim their citizen rights, which are accepted by the United Nations Organization as the international consumer rights.

Main activities:
- information, education and consumer support (consumers rights and responsibilities),
- councelling and consumer activity information by cooperation with state and regional media,
- counseling before purchase or in case of abuse,
- consumer support in actions in front of the court,
- school administration, organizes seminars, trainings and conferences ,
- educates the pupils at schools and cooperates with the Ministry of Education SR in the process of integrating consumer education into the curriculum
- specialist conductions and preparation for teachers in consumer education in schools
- leads the consumer clubs for young consumers in elementary and secondary school and high schools
- organizes of the international competition for young consumers “Consumption for life”
- coordination and distribution of the student diary “Wise Choice?”, which is edited by the support and assistance of the European Committee in the 25 member states in the EU,
- cooperates with the Members of Parliament and ministries in notices, regulations and law making process concerned to the consumer rights, gives an opinion on the proposal of consumer regulation,
- support in interests for consumers in the commission of energy for NR SR, environmental commission about product marking by MŽP SR
- publishes leaflets, brochures, methodical materials for teachers, year-books and magazines,
- support of interest of the Slovakian consumers in the Advisory Committee for European Consumers in Brussels
- cooperates with the citizen´s organizations at home and abroad, realizes many regional, national and international activities.

Since 1999 the Association has been providing legal advices to consumers in regional offices, we also represent consumers in court. We participate in consultation on new consumer acts, where we persuade enterpreneurs to obey the rules of business ethics as well as to create codes for good practices.

Since 1999 Association of consumer subjects in Slovakia has realized many national and regional activities, but also international. The most important activities were: informing and educating the consumers, counseling before purchase or in case of abuse, education of young people in the youth clubs and active participation in law making process concerned to the consumer rights. In cooperation with the Ministry of Education SR, district offices and departments of education we have prepared a range of seminars and trainings. We shared the preparation and published a lot of methodical materials for teachers in schools.

In 1999 the Association of Consumer Organizations in Slovakia organized a Slovak consumer competition for youth, and since 2000 it became an international competition for young consumers called "Consumption for life". The aim of the competition is to support, by means of out of school activities, interest of young people in creation of consumer articles and magazines on selected topics of rights, protection and consumers´ interests in market economy.
In the year 2000 Association raised its activities in other regions, both organizations and clubs. Today 9 organizations of legal entities and 19 clubs at elementary, secondary schools and universities of paedagogic intention are included.

In 2002-2003 we realized the project “Environmental production and consumption" to raise awareness of the consumer towards sustainable consumption. In regional trainings we have trained 352 teachers of elementary and secondary schools, we issued 30000 leaflets to support buying of environmentally safe products which were determined by Ministry of Environment SR.

In 2003 we realized 2 projects together with CITADINANZATIVA in Rome. In the projects ”Principles of subsidiarity” and “Democratic citizenship” we monitored and supported activities of the citizen´s organizations in consumer policy making.

In 2004 together with a German consumer organization VZBV in Berlin we realized a project called “YOMAGNET”. It is aimed to develop the consumer communication among young people by a web-page about their lifestyles and about sustainable consumption. 13 EU member countries and 4 candidate countries participated in this project.
http://www.yomag.net/

In 2004-2005 we organized an international project „Consumer education – component part of the school reform in transforming countries“. The aim of the international projects (Czech, Poland, Latvia, Lituania, Estonia, Ukrainian, Slovakia) was the development of the special teachers´ preparation for realization of consumer education, increase the number of multipliers for consumer education at elementary, secondary schools and universities in different countries. It was created a manual on the seminar as the basis for the methodolocical materials in individual countries. The countries – participants in the project -all have similar conditions for education and school systems, therefore, the exchange of experiences on consumer education in individual countries and their publishing will be a great asset from the seminar. Output from the project was better skilled and methodically prepared trainers who will be able to organize additional trainings for teachers at elementary, secondary schools and universities. Another output from the project was the methodical brochure called „How to Educate the Consumer „ created during the seminar and additionally used in following seminars in the individual countries. Participants of the seminar were teachers of elementary, secondary schools and universities who have cooperated with consumer organizations in different countries for a long time. Those teachers realize the Consumer Education at schools and brought practical experiences and methodical suggestions on how to integrate Consumer Education into the lessons and curriculum of individual subjects. Many of the participants are authors of methodical publications in their own countries.

In 2005-2006 we participated in realization of the international projects:

The Europe Diary – “Wise Choice?” ( Belgium)- European Commision finance project student´s diary managed by Generation Europe. Diares is dedicated for the third class of the high schools in Slovak Republik. It is a source of informations how to inform young people to know their consumer rights and to make qualified decisions.
http://www.generation-europe.org/


CCN- Consumer Citizenship Network (Norway) – is focused in development of consumer citizenship as a base for raising of consumers European citizenship and sustainability.
www.hihm.no/concit

E-CONS- The European Network for Consumer Education (Spain)- provide the schools opportunity to cerate educational partnership and international project.
-to promote cooperation and educational innovation in school education.
http://www.e-cons.net/

Internet safety for children(Bulgarie )- the result of project is website for the non-formal education of teachers and parents how to protect children from Internet generated risks, to develop common educational modules for adult learning providers, to develop an educational materials for parents and teachers. http://www.onlinechildprotection.org/

Energy Regulation ( Italy)
- monitoring the opening of energy market for consumers in European Union
http://www.energyandconsumers.net/


CEAN- Consumer Education for Adults Network (London Metropolitan University, Greate Britain)- to promote consumer education for EU member and accession countries, to provide a common framework for the development of adult consumer education resources and exchange ideas and share best practice.
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/depts/hhs/cean/