PROYECTO KIEU

Proyecto Kieu is an NGO focused in local development in the geographical area of La Sagra (Toledo) in Spain. Since 2010, together with the youngsters in our community, we promote awareness, active participation, critical thinking and ultimately self-social development. We've established strong alliances with local municipalities in several villages in our area with the aim to multiply opportunities for youth in the territory and bring in new resources. The overall strategy of PK in La Sagra County is to combine the resources for the young population in the area and start cooperating among the villages to make the best out of the existing possibilities and create collective new ones optimizing the resources available. This territory in Central Spain is formed by 31 different villages, most of them under 5.000 inhabitants, some of them rural, some of them pre-urban, and all sharing the circumstance of having a really big young population with a strong lack of opportunities and activities for themselves. That's why PK makes the young people from 14 to 35 years old its primary target and therefore the main engine in the organization is to find ways for widening our youngster’s life options and models; reinforce their active participation in the community; empower them, inspire them, help them to develop their passions and build themselves for the present and the future. In the process we pass along, practice and create tools for social change towards a most fair and dignified life for all. International activities help us to invite young people in and foster their involvement into the organization and the community by doing different activities and projects. In terms of education, considering the high drop-out school rate and low motivation we suffer, we promote and implement fun, attractive and happy educational activities based on non-formal education tools and learning by doing contexts. All that towards the horizon of accompanying youngsters and young adults in their path to adulthood and inspire them to build themselves while transforming their environment into a better, cleaner, more respectful and happier one. Among youngsters we focus in the ones with fewer opportunities cause due to our actual socio-economic situation, most of La Sagra youngsters face severe economic problems at home and quite a discouraging scene in terms of employment or education. La Sagra is the land between Madrid and Toledo (big and heritage cities, respectively) but even though, the public communication system is not that good, and youngsters living in our area are quite disconnected from the opportunities that cities offer. We neither live in a rural area: several decades ago our community lost their connexion with farming and land because land-owners decided to sell the land to built, and built and built… So, basically our geographic place is like a pre-urban landscape with lots of houses and not many things to do both in terms of personal and professional life. When you have a job and a car the geographical-communicational situation of our county is not a problem… but job and car is something not many of the youngsters we work with have the chance to enjoy, at least, at this moment of their lives. Along the years, activity after activity, some of these youngsters become deep involved in the organization as youth leaders, volunteers (both local and international), staff or venturing into their own initiatives under the umbrella of the organization. Everything we do, we do it with GLO-CAL parameters: considering our responsibility in the global situation and focusing our activities in our local area (or the local area of our partners); we use Human Rights, Gender Equality and Environmental Care as central concepts of our daily work.