Associação Inspira! - Intervenção juvenil e ambiental

‘Associação Inspira!’ is a youth non-governmental organization focused on environmental education and youth intervention. Evolving from an informal group, we are over 50 youth associates, working for the social and ecological development of our region and the empowerment of its young people. We aim to socially improve education and opportunity on youngsters and young adults, by stimulating their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. For that, we use non-formal education and intervention tools to promote actions on social inclusion, gender equality, employability, volunteer work, structured dialogue, civic and democratic participation and intercultural education, mobilizing young people to make a change in our region paradigm. Based on a small town in the northern hills of Portugal, we face a very isolated society, known for its closed mind, resistance to innovation and low contact with the exterior. With our environmental education programs and activities, both on schools and informal situations, alongside with the youth mobility and intercultural exchange projects and our social and community development actions, we aim to create a more open background in our society, with a healthy and sustainable mentality and, that way, socially educate a region that is suffering from its isolation and the desertion of youth professionally qualified individuals that find it not stimulating and open enough and with few opportunities for them. Since our creation we have been directing our efforts to implement a constant set of policies and activities to all the youngsters in our town, focusing on giving them opportunities and tools to develop themselves. We have created a Nature School project and have been leading outdoor educational activities both with informal groups of people and in cooperation with other entities and we are right now focusing all of our efforts in the implementation of a Youth Agenda, that will provide our town youth population with a set of programs to support their personal and professional development, civic participation and job, internship an volunteer opportunities, through Youth Information and action on local policymakers. Always with a ''young group that does stuff in the community'' spirit, we have been mobilizing ever more and more local young people as volunteers and associates, building volunteer groups and encouraging them into creating and leading their own intervention actions. This has been having a huge impact in our small-minded local society, that has never understand the concept of volunteering or civic participation and that has a lot of stigmas towards young people, seeing them as apathetic, irresponsible and incapable individuals, that local mentality being one of the main contributions for the ever growing desire to leave the town and region on our youth.