SCI - Projets internationaux ASBL

SCI Projets Internationaux a.k.a SCI Belgium is an NGO and a youth organization whose mission is to promote peace, intercultural understanding, solidarity, social justice, inclusion and ecology through voluntary projects and educative work. SCI Belgium is a member of SCI International, an international voluntary service network with 40 branches in Asia and Europe and more than 50 partners in Eastern Europe, Africa, North and Latin America, the Mediterranean region that was founded after the First World War. SCI Belgium implements framework and activities that allow the people participating to develop collective actions, to act in a responsible way within society and to be players in social change. 1) Volunteering • Volunteering is at the heart of SCI’s strategy. Because of its non-commercial nature, volunteering provides a different way of looking at how society is organized. It highlights the social aspects of society rather than economic relationships and values participation and each individual’s contribution to the community. • At SCI, volunteering is organized in relation to collective action, which allows encounters between cultures, different social groups and generations. • The non-violent management of conflicts, respect towards the environment and collective decisionmaking based on dialogue and consensus are always present in our volunteering. SCI Projets Internationaux, the Belgian branch of the international movement, organises international voluntary exchanges in Belgium and sends volunteers to all continents. 2) Strengthening abilities SCI’s learning process aims to strengthen people’s capacity to acknowledge their role in society, to develop confidence in their ability to intervene and to become players in social change. At the SCI Belgium, there is a team of trainers that create (with the help of volunteers and in partnership with other organizations) pedagogical tools about the topics of development, north-south relations, migration, interculturality, gender equality, ecological transition. Those tools, through trainings, help the volunteers and other target groups become aware and strengthen their knowledge and skills. Through trainings for trainers, the volunteers become also trainers. 3) Creating awareness and mobilization In order to promote its vision, SCI organizes awareness programs to help understand better the mechanisms governing the interdependence between social groups, to develop a critical and analytical eye and to provoke a desire to change individually and collectively. SCI-Belgium organizes various activities and trainings in order to educate and create awareness in order to provoke this desire to change. The SCI Belgium created activist's groups called "Collectifs" that work on different topics (migration, development, gender, de-colonization) in order to gain skills and knowledge in those topics and to create awareness actions related to those. The target groups : the SCI Belgium targets mostly youth (as a youth organization) aged 16-30 and is also open to all the people who want to participate to the activities proposed (no matter the age, gender, origins, etc). The SCI Belgium works with schools, youth houses and youth groups like scouts (use of pedagogical tools with trainers based on demands of teachers and youth leaders). There is also a special focus on including groups of people from the migration in the activities of the SCI and more recently with Youth with fewer opportunities.