Rua dos Mercadores 3
4C
3800-000 Aveiro
Portugal
- Environment/Sustainable development
- International/Cultural relations
- Youth and education
Agora Aveiro is a non-profit and non-governmental, grassroots, private NGO, founded under Portuguese law in 2010 in Aveiro, Portugal, by a group of young professionals from different areas and different cultural backgrounds. Our main goal is the promotion of active citizenship and participation among young people. Most of the activities are built around the topics of inclusion, solidarity, and environmental awareness. There are 2 full-time employees, 5 board members, around 30 local volunteers and over 3000 members in the association. Annually we earn and re-invest close to 150000 euros that comes from donations, sponsorships and grants. Our main projects are educational workshops/mobility projects, comprehensive volunteering programmes and the TEDxAveiro event happening annually in Aveiro. Also, we organise human libraries and other events tackling social inclusion.
Agora Aveiro operates under a mission "Be the Change", and with the objective of promoting active citizenship. In 2010 it arose from the urge to “make it happen”, as there was no other local association for young people that was questioning paradigms, and promoting active citizenship and participation hands-on. We are here with the will to join our efforts and skills to change the community and the world around us, to be a part of a solution and not simply complain about problems. We provide learning opportunities to youngsters and young adults, using non-formal education and mentoring. We help them conduct projects that contribute to society and have the potential to transform what surrounds us. We create spaces where youth can share ideas and opinions, and we encourage the development of a critical, proactive and constructive attitude.
Agora Aveiro is the most active youth association locally and regionally, and some of our signature local projects are: - TEDxAveiro - an annual conference for 700+ people in the audience where we, by bringing extraordinary speakers, promote innovation, solutions and creativity when it comes to different areas including citizenship; - I love Aveiro - a project that educates our citizens, but also tourists, about the deep culture, uniqueness, and traditions (and changes in them) of our city and how to avoid the traps of seeing culture superficially and learn something from it. We interview people with stories to tell, publish these stories and intervene with urban art pieces in our city; - Human libraries - this is an educational project when it comes to inclusion. We provide opportunities for our citizens to have 1 on 1 conversations with members of excluded groups of people, such as refugees, people with different disabilities, with cultural or social obstacles, among others. Each year we organise a couple of Human Libraries. - several environmental projects where we raise awareness of environmental issues (a very important issue in Portugal due to forest fires, but also in general), educate about the protection of the environment and put the education into practice by planting thousands of trees with the help of hundreds of volunteers, clean up the beaches, etc; Besides, we have coordinated dozens of Youth in Action and Erasmus+ mobility projects, hosting over in Aveiro for short and long-term mobilities over 600 people in the last years. We have been active in EVS/ESC programmes, and several of our projects were awarded as the best EVS/ESC practice project of the year in Portugal, by our National Agency for Erasmus+. Our several local ESC projects were awarded as the best practice / inspiring project of the Year by our NA, such as “Heroes of Aveiro” in 2021.
We have a strong presence locally, regionally and even more and more on the national level and therefore we can help build visibility of ALF in Portugal. We can always contribute with our best practices, exchanging experiences and we are happy to brainstorm about what we can do within the network.
We completely share the values of ALF and we think that by joining the network our voices will become stronger. In the last few years, we have been concerned about raising radicalisation and just now while we write this we hear in the news that the far-right political party in Portugal reached 21% on surveys for the next elections. We believe that only together we can amplify our voices and therefore build more inclusive and resilient communities. We believe in Dialogue as a tool and Deliberation as methodology and we would like to focus more on that in the coming years. We would like to join the network because we understand that you are leading this movement. We would like to contribute to it so that we can multiply the impact.