ESC: Solidarity Superheroes Summer 25

Agoraveiro is a non-profit, private NGO, founded under Portuguese law, in May 2010 in Aveiro, Portugal, by a group of young professionals from different areas (business, international relations, psychology). Our aim is the promotion of active citizenship, with special attention to human rights/inclusion, environmental issues, and culture. Most of our projects are planned within these areas of activity, and we mostly use non-formal education tools to reach our objectives. Agoraveiro has been sustainably growing, counting today with 2 full-time employees, 40 active local volunteers (occasionally paid through different national support programs), over 1000 members, and over 28000 followers on social networks. Most of our local volunteers are students from the University of Aveiro, aged 18-25. We operate in a medium-sized city, Aveiro, 70000 inhabitants, and 13.000 students at the University of Aveiro. Besides our locally developed projects, we are also active on the European level, through the Erasmus+ programme. Our international projects mostly tackle human rights, and in the last 4 years, we have been much dedicated to migration-related issues. Some of our main activities are: - TEDxAveiro - an annual conference for 700+ people in the audience where we, by bringing extraordinary speakers, promote innovation, solutions, and creativity when it comes to different areas, including citizenship.  - "Planting the future" - an awarded project that raises awareness of the environment (a fundamental issue in Portugal due to forest fires), where we educate about the protection of the environment and put the education in practice by planting thousands of trees with the help of hundreds of volunteers.  - "I love Aveiro" (and its spin-offs) - a project that educates our citizens, but also thousands of tourists/travellers, about the deep culture of our city and how to avoid the traps of seeing culture superficially and actually learn something from it. We interview people with stories to tell, we publish these stories and intervene with urban art pieces in our city.  - Human libraries - this is an educational project tackling inclusion. We provide opportunities for our citizens to have 1 on 1 conversation with members of excluded groups of people, such as refugees, people with different disabilities, with cultural or social obstacles, among others. Our "signature" methodology is guerrilla marketing which we use regularly in order to increase the visibility of our organization and/or raise awareness about a certain topic. All projects mentioned have been organized thanks to the involvement of many partners (private sector and local institutions) who recognized their importance and helped us to develop them. These are different companies, of which some working on the international and national level, the city hall, the University of Aveiro, among others. Besides, we have coordinated dozens of Youth in Action/Erasmus+/ESC mobility activities, hosting in Aveiro for short and long term mobilities over 500 people in the last five years. Some of them are: "Generations to Gardens", a local initiative promoting intergenerational learning and healthy lifestyles, "Art and Trust" a bilateral youth initiative, promoting creativity and civic participation through street art, "Let's do it Guerrilla Way" TC on guerrilla marketing, communication, three mobilities of youth workers regarding the topic of migrants' inclusion and empowering local NGOs to get involved in a meaningful way (and the 4th one on its way), two youth exchanges dedicated to healthy lifestyles topics, and a youth exchange dedicated to the identity and European citizenship, "ENTERPRISING" - mobility of youth workers. Besides, we have implemented 8 EVS/ESC projects in Aveiro, with a total of 25 volunteers. Our last EVS project that ended in 2018 was awarded as the best practice EVS project of the year in Portugal, by our NA. Our latest ESC project was also awarded as an inspirational project of the year in Portugal in 2019. Since 2016, we regularly coordinate ESC projects for other institutions in Aveiro. Another unique project we developed in 2016 was "The Travel School", in partnership with The Travel Club from Serbia and Croatia. It was with the intention to promote learning while travelling and questioning travelling. We apply for the Quality Label because in the last (nearly) 10 years we have witnessed how EVS/ESC is (1) a truly life-changing opportunity for youngsters and we want to keep providing these opportunities and (2) how important tool volunteering can be in local communities. The satisfaction when comparing a youngster before and after the project period is enormous and therefore we want to be part of it. Year after year our volunteers prove us this. Also, it is a good internationalisation exercise for local institutions that take part in it and host volunteers and many times volunteers even left a long-lasting mark in Aveiro thanks to their projects.