ESC: New project of pedagogic farm based on equine assisted interventions

AEDEQ, is the Spanish Association for Equine Assisted (Educative, Therapeutic, and of Adapted Leisure) Interventions, EAI. We were born in 1996, registered in 2001, with the main goal of recollecting, analysing, testing, and diffusing the best practices in the EAI sector. Through participating in over 35 congresses, in 4 Educational Research projects in the Erasmus+ framework, and hosting/sending/coordinating EVS/ESC projects, AEDEQ has recollected a patrimony of technical information about the EAI and Social Education sectors. We have been members of HETI, the international federation of the horse in education and therapy until 2018, and we are now looking for new international umbrella partners. We are members of FITRAMA, International Federation of Therapy and Assistance through Animals Mediation, not very active; and we are members of AIEJI, the International Association of Social Educators, very active organization. Our president has been in the directive board of HETI from 2012 to 2018, and is a member of AIEJI directive since 2009. He has been founder and directive also of ACEB, the Professional and Scientific Alliance for the State of Welfare (of Spain) for two years. Our name is Spanish because we were born in Spain, but we don't pretend to be representing the Spanish organizations of EAI. We humbly wish to help the diffusion of best practices in our field. In 2020, we opened our new Pedagogic Farm based on EAI, in Serrateix, in the hills of Barcelona province, which is a Training and Research centre where we hola a practical horses caregiving and handling course, and conduct different therapeutic and educative researches with the help of ESC and local volunteers. Since 2005 we entered the world of International research projects, getting each year more involved in networking for peace, inclusion, sustainability, health, sports, and education. This year, 2021 we started a cooperation with Sabadell Municipality (where our association was born and is settled) and the Sabadell Sports HUB, who aim to launch Sabadell City as a European Referent City for Sustainability and Health through Sports. We also started a new Erasmus+ project, TRYDE, that aims to recollect, test, and diffuse the best practices in the EAI field, specially in TR (Therapeutic Riding), for people with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) through an international online platform for sharing and exchanging good practices. We are launching a national platform affiliated to the international one, hoping to help all the Spanish (and later also Latin American) organizations, professionals, students, and amateurs of EAI to start cooperating instead of competing, to increase the quality of life of all the participants, including the animals, and thus the quality of our services. The pandemic, forcing us, offered us the chance to improve our digitalization (to keep up with the other organizations and institutions), and to professionalize our organization. We will keep on treating the animals and the partners, beneficiaries, in a familiar way, as vocational caregivers and educators as we are; but we are going to extend our networking through social media and other ITC tools, so to involve as many youths as possible in networking for sustainability, social inclusion, environmental and animals' protection, health and sports. We can count on different local organizations to help us in this task, and also on the ESC Spanish HUB, which will help us to network with many organizations in Spain who already co-work at international level. The beneficiaries, or target groups of AEDEQ are: 1) the horses and other animals, domestic and wild ones, and the natural environment; 2) the people with different functionality and/or social inclusion difficulties, with their families; 3) the vocational and professional caregivers, health and education operators, students, amateurs, and followers of the EAI sector; 4) EAI, health and education, environmental protection, sustainability, and inclusion organizations. The goal referred to the EAI sector is to reach the official recognition of our disciplines, promoting the production of scientific technical information based on evidence, definition of common programmes for the implementation of ECTS credits, and possibly stride for the issuing of the European Professional Card by the EU authorities. All these ambitious goals, we believe that are reachable because EAI produce benefits in all the spheres of the human and animal personality, improving attention, observation, concentration, communication, balance, emotional control, self consciousness, spatial and temporal perception, leadership, strength and its control, reliability, self assessment, lifelong learning, friendly and caregiving attitude, patience, among many others.