ARCS - ARCI CULTURE SOLIDALI APS

ARCS is an NGO, which mission is to enhance democracy, active citizenship and to fight all the forms of discrimination. It was born in 1985, is based in Rome and acts in Italy, Europe and 17 non European countries. It has more than 40 workers and collaborators and more than 100 volunteers every year. ARCS is involved in interventions of international cooperation, international volunteering, global citizenship education and humanitarian aid, always having as priority the community organization, the fight for human rights and peace, the support to local communities. ARCS strategy in its international cooperation activities has as an essential prerequisite: the involvement of communities of citizens with the aim of enhancing civil aggregations and strengthening their democratic ownership. Cooperating means for ARCS involving communities, weaving relationships and partnerships between territories, people and organizations in order to develop projects aimed at the affirmation of human rights, peace and dialogue, and at the promotion of an active citizenship and democratic participation.The main objectives of the NGO, pointed out in the Statute are: affirmation of the values of solidarity, peace, non-violence, universal rights and global justice; the fight against all forms of poverty, discrimination and social and political exclusion; the social and cultural promotion of citizens, through the affirmation of democratic participation and ownership and through the strengthening of relations of cooperation between communities and between territories; the protection of equal opportunities and gender equality; the knowledge and implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights principles and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child; the dissemination of the founding principles of the European Union; the affirmation of conscious and socially sustainable lifestyles. Moreover, ARCS is taking action together with the following Networks: CONCORD Italia, NGO platform in the Middle East and Mediterranean, Global Call to Action against Poverty, Global Campaign for Education, RIDE - Italian Network for Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue, Euro-Mediterranean Network for Human Rights, SOLIDAR, Anna Lindh Foundation, IFS - International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Houses. Target groups are local communities in the countries where ARCS is active: In Italy (11 regions), South America (Colombia, Brasil), Cuba, Africa (Senegal, Mozambique, Rwanda), South Mediterrenean (Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt), Middle East (Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria). In these countries and in EU countries, ARCS is always involving and working with local partners to support many different kind of beneficiaries and target groups, such as women and girls, children and youngsters, cooperatives and grassroots associations, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, prisoners, workers of agricultural sector, disabled people and any kind of marginalized people or groups suffering for poverty, discrimination, underrepresentation.