Yes Europa Asociación Building Bridges

YesEuropa 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 sufficient mobility experience as trainers. 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, educative and/or artistic expression based on the previous values. TARGET GROUP We work with organisations in the fields of culture, education and youth, so we have an ample target group. In general, we focus on anyone interested in art, culture, heritage and Europe issues, specially those looking for an experience abroad and in need of a grant or funding. This group involves people of all ages and backgrounds but we are more specialised in youth: most of our users are long term unemployed people, with very few opportunities to get funding for developing studying and working activities in Spain or abroad. 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, educative and/or artistic expression based on the previous values. - Promote the social construction of Europe Our activities include: 1. Youth information Our members include people who have participated in different programmes: EVS, Leonardo, Erasmus,... and we want to offer other young people such chances. We provide information services through our websites and social media channels. Our websites manage over 40.000 users. 2. Employment for graduates: Counselling and Information Our aim is to support, inform and guide graduates so they can gain qualifications and access the working market. We are specialist in providing employment information and guidance Europe, especially about UK. There is a high demand about this services, often not covered. There are many grants and traineeships, unfortunately unknown for students. We provide counselling and information through our websites, managing a virtual group, and on-site helpdesk in our office. 3. Youth cultural resources We manage a big network of contacts and user database through our portals. Additionally, we have created other communication channels ( Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter) including information about grants, support, funding and grants related to culture and arts. Although there is a lot of information, people not always find what they are looking for. We count with over 25.000 friends and followers. 4. Training We offer on-site and online training courses for young people: - Enterpreneurship courses , creation of cultural companies, associations and social enterprises - Strategies to search information in the web - Language courses - Studying and working abroad 5. Cultural activities We actively collaborate with the portal FabricaCultural, providing content in order to reach more than 40.00 of their users. We also participate with Bookcrossing Madrid in promoting reading activities. This is a free exchange of books world-wide, with over 34,000 members in Spain. We have released over 400 books for it all over Spain.