ESC: Learning to Co-create a Europe of Solidarity

ADEGUA is a non-profit association that works to improve the quality of life of rural citizens and contribute to the sustainable development of the territory of action in the Guadajoz region, an area of the province of Córdoba with high youth unemployment (which has been worsened by the strong impact of the coronavirus on the economy) and population indices that indicate a decline in the number of inhabitants in all the villages that make up the region. It is one of the 50 Andalusian Rural Development Groups and is supported by the European Union, the Andalusian Regional Government and other public administrations in its task of development, diversification and socio-economic modernisation of the Guadajoz region in the province of Córdoba. ADEGUA implements different types of actions through development programmes within the framework of of European rural development policies, training and cultural programmes and actions aimed at specific audiences such as young people specific audiences, such as work with young people and children to promote European citizenship and mobility and the values on which the project of a united Europe is based, among them and in a fundamental way, solidarity. This is demonstrated by the work on projects to improve the quality of life of the population, including volunteer projects since 1999, and the relevant role that these projects play in relation to the organisation's objectives. Since 1998, ADEGUA has been running a Europe Direct Information Centre, which is one of the most important promoters of European awareness and culture in the area. Every year it directly contacts more than a thousand young people and children through information campaigns in primary and secondary schools, training workshops on mobility, courses on European citizenship or on an individual basis. It is with this particular public, young people and children from rural areas in a peripheral area with socio-economic problems that ADEGUA works to promote European values and mobility. Understanding that they open doors to the future, and therefore also to the territory in which we live.