Asociación Building Bridges.

Building Bridges Cultural Association was founded in 2008 to promote a spirit and community integration and to foster European culture awareness among the youth. Building Bridges is presented at local level as a tool to assist and support the implementation of non formal education courses and improving knowledge of European labour system practices. We organise courses, visits and meetings, European events for public agencies on policies concerning youth , mobility, sports , local economic development , culture and cooperation with developing countries. We believe that transnational experience could offer young people the opportunity to grow within a European dimension through their personal and professional skills , so that they could become main actors of the European future. Since its foundation, the association has participated in various advocacy and promotion of European mobility and its members have large mobility experience as trainers. Building Bridges has been actively involved in local and international formal and non formal projects since the very start of its existence. Up until now, the organization has successfully implemented as coordinators more than 10 separate project actions on its own (and several times that as a partner), especially KA1 and KA2 actions. Our aims are: -To build bridges and promote the social construction of Europe -To build bridges and promote intercultural dialogue and favour understanding of foreign cultures. -Plan bridges using European projects to promote participation. -Step on bridges to support any cultural, educational, environmental and/or artistic expression based on the previous values.

ACTIVITIES All our activities pursue our aim: provide information and counselling to young people according to the following principles: – Promote intercultural dialogue and favour understanding of foreign cultures. – Educate young people towards an active European citizenship. – Support any cultural, educational and/or artistic expression based on the previous values. – Promote the social construction of Europe Our organisation gathers professionals and volunteers with different backgrounds and experience. A managing team is in charge of the management, monitoring and implementation of the EU projects, specially KA1 and KA2 projects under Erasmus+. Our team is integrated by staff who gained Leonardo, Erasmus, EVS-ESC and European Social Fund grants. We also have experienced staff in the Eurodesk network as National Coordinator and Team Europe network. We have an ESC accreditation since 2010 and we made some projects in the last year, sending volunteers to all over Europe and hosting ESC in Madrid. We send over 150 ECS participants every year. Our accreditation is renewed until 2020 and we are active in European Solidarity Corps nowadays. In fact, we are part of an advisory board together with the EU Commission in order to improve the ESC platform and provide feedback and new ideas to the ESC managing team within the EACEA. Within our association there are European projects managers and we belong to National and International networks: CCIVS, Anna Lindh Foundation, CIVIS, EYCA and Team Europe. Since 2021 Building Bridges belongs to the Regional Network of Youth Information Centres, given by the Regional Government of Madrid. Building Bridges was recently added by the Regional Government of Madrid within the Regional Youth Information Centre Network. Building Bridges also develops online courses on EU Project Management, Cultural Management, DIgital Tools and NGOs creation and management thanks to our platform YesEuropa Academy, counting on more than 500 students in our first year. We also participate actively in other KA1 and lead KA2 actions, specially youth exchanges, seminars, study visits and youth workers mobility, sending over 150 people every year. Building Bridges also leads 2 projects involving Adult Education and Higher Education target groups together with public and private universities.