Expanding the Code beyond Ireland: Erasmus+ Project with Latvia

Global Citizenship Education Code of Good Practice & Community of Practice: Ireland & Latvia



In 2025, IDEA partnered with LAPAS, the Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation which unites 35 NGOs across Latvia working for global sustainable development and global citizenship education (GCE), on an Erasmus+ project titled ‘Global Citizenship Education (GCE) Code of Good Practice & Community of Practice: Ireland & Latvia’. LAPAS and IDEA worked together to enhance the quality of GCE on local, national and European levels. The project ran to the end of 2025 as a small-scale partnership funded from the Erasmus+ programme via Léargas. 

The IDEA Code of Good Practice for Development Education (GCE) and the strong Community of Practice for GCE in Ireland that has developed around the Code is the first of its kind in Ireland and a trailblazer internationally. This project supported the first piloting of the Code in an international context. A new IDEA task group for the project made up of Code members shared their experience and reflections on the Code with a group of organisations working in GCE in Latvia. IDEA staff and the task group supported the Latvian organisations to adopt the Code for their national context and then to pilot the Code in their organisations. 

Members from the Code communities in Ireland and Latvia learned from one another and exchanged good practices on GCE. This collaboration took place over a number of in-person and online events. In March 2025, an IDEA delegation of staff and project task group members provided training and shared learning at an early meeting of the Latvian organisations hosted by LAPAS in Riga to support the development of the Code there. A delegation of LAPAS staff and members then attended the IDEA Code Network meeting in Dublin in June to share their experience of the project so far and to provide an international perspective to conversations on the Code. In November 2025, there was an online bilateral meeting between LAPAS and IDEA members to reflect on the Code together. This was an opportunity to share our good practices and challenges and to compare the different national contexts for our work. 

The project was also an opportunity for Code members in Ireland to reflect on the Irish Code and how it can be best used and enhanced, building on learning from our peers in Latvia. The project task group developed and piloted a new support for using the Code in Ireland to strengthen it. As always with the Code, ownership remained with the IDEA members, and we wanted this new Code support to be developed based on the needs and interests of the members.

Finally, the project took the first steps in establishing a pan-European Community of Practice for GCE. Staff and members from both IDEA and LAPAS attended two European events on GCE to share their reflections and experiences on the project and to promote the Code of Good Practice among practitioners beyond the partner countries.