The Kaleidoscope of GCE(S) in Belgium: the issues, tensions and conflicts that NGOs encounter

Based on documentary research and a qualitative survey (participant observation and comprehensive interviews), this chapter aims to shed light on what ECM(S) means for non-governmental actors in Belgium. From the outset, it is illusory to attempt to provide an exhaustive overview of ECM(S) in Belgium. It refers to a complex, dense, heterogeneous landscape, involving a multitude of actors and entangled understandings of the ECM(S). This is why we have chosen to introduce readers to a series of issues and tensions that run through the sector, as well as to a plurality of practices, while providing some historical markers and framing effects that allow us to understand the directions and paths taken by the ECM(S) in Belgium. First, it proposes to identify the framing effects and key issues of ECM(S) for non-governmental actors in a context of national reform, promotion of new public management, reduction of public subsidies and global transformation of the worlds of international aid and its orientations in the light of the SDGs. It then provides an overview of education for global citizenship and solidarity (ECM(S)) carried out in Belgium by these non-governmental actors: these include organizations generally identified as 'NGOs' in the current language and that of the worlds of humanitarian aid and development, but also trade unions, mutual societies, universities, etc. We thus shed light on the breadth and diversity of the sector and the plurality of practices funded under this register. This section discusses some of the tensions in which these actors are caught, between pragmatic issues of financial survival of the organizations and ambitions to achieve their missions, which are, in part, self-assigned within the framework of the ECM(S) and their activities. Finally, we look back at the extent to which ECM(S) has become part of the activities of non-governmental actors in recent years and the development of this sector as a real professional field in search of recognition and characterized by a strong feminization.