What we do
Our work areas
At ASAD we create and carry out consultations and projects in cooperation and development education in which creativity and communication play a central role, because we believe these are key factors for the empowerment and active participation of the citizens.
Areas of Intervention
International Development Cooperation
Our work in the field is characterized by the use of community empowerment processes as the foundation of our activities so that the populations we work with can accomplish for themselves an authentic social development. To that end, we work alongside organizations within our partner countries to identify and promote projects focused on securing and defending human rights, always making sure to generate and strengthen the skills necessary for the proposals to be sustainable over time. Since our beginning, we have cooperated with organizations in Guatemala, Cabo Verde, Colombia,Guinea Bissau, Cambodia, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic.
Development Education
At ASAD we believe development education carried out in Spain is key to getting the population to be conscious of the reality and causes of local and global inequality. Development education is the seed that can generate a real change in mentality, because a society that’s informed and well-versed in issues of development and social change will be inclined to engage with social justice on a local as well as international level. Since 2012 we have worked on a wide variety of development education projects in Granada and Jaén, mainly through secondary schools that have allowed us to conduct awareness and mobilization activities aimed at the general population of both provinces. In all of our local initiatives, communication understood as a bidirectional right and creativity expressed through diverse forms of socially engaged art have a fundamental role, because through these tools we are able to deeply understand reality and equip ourselves with the most powerful abilities available for intervening in short, medium, and long term: the abilities to create and spread ideas.
Social action
At ASAD we take seriously the possibility of having an impact on the social sphere through comprehensive actions aimed at reducing inequalities and eliminating situations of risk, exclusion and social marginalisation of groups and/or territories with social and structural inequalities. In this sense, we try to generate changes and with them transform the lives of people, groups and communities in order to improve them and thus eliminate any type of injustice. For this reason, we promote different lines of work: specific social action projects, active participation in networks and promotion of volunteering.
In this way, we carry out a preventive function as we act on the causes that generate individual and collective problems, derived from human relations and the social environment; a planning function as we elaborate and execute social action projects aimed at population groups in situations of social risk and lack of application of Human Rights; and a direct function, by promoting the development of people’s faculties to face future problems on their own, as well as so that they can integrate satisfactorily in social life.
Strategic Lines of Work (What We Do)
- Gender equality: promote gender equality and women’s and childrens’ rights through personal transformation and feminist public/political advocacy.
- Economical Justice: contribute to the development of a fairer, more egalitarian (considering the axes of gender, social class, religion and ethnicity) and sustainable society through the promotion of social and solidarity economy, the promotion of food sovereignty, income generating activities and the strengthening of self management.
- Basic social services: promote the right to equitable availability, access and enjoyment of basic social services through the development of education, sanitation, water, health and infrastructure projects.
- Communication right: promote civil society’s right to communication as a key tool for citizen participation in political advocacy in defense of social justice, civil liberties and diverse cultural identities.
- Institutional strengthening: Strengthen institutional and human capacities to ensure the long term viability and sustainability of the organization.
To find out more about our work in each of the lines, we invite you to consult our Strategic Plan 2020-2025.
And for our previous track record, please see our Strategic Plan 2012-2017 (extended to 2019).
HOW DO WE WORK?
In the international cooperation area, ASAD collaborates with reliable organizations that act as local counterparts in the partner countries, together with which projects are identified and formulated and submitted to the various local, regional, national and international funding calls.
We combine funds from approved projects with our own funds received from partners and donors to implement the projects together with the technical staff of these partners, with whom we monitor the activities and evaluate the results.
Similarly, education and training activities for Global Citizenship are carried out by the technical staff and the collaboration of the volunteer group, both in Spain and in the countries where we work, promoting research and training for development, awareness and social mobilization.
In social action terms, ASAD works with several local associations in Granada that represent some of the most disadvantaged groups in the city. The people who form part of ASAD carry out volunteer activities within these organizations, thus strengthening local structures and encouraging participation and social action.
Finally, we would like to tell you a bit more about the Right to Communication:
At ASAD we make participatory short films, films, street artivism, information campaigns, exhibitions, community multimedia centers… and, above all, training, so that people and organizations can create them for themselves as tools to exert social pressure and fight for the life they want.
Knowing about communication and being able to communicate helps us to understand our own reality and our context’s; to know and understand the causes of inequality and its possible solutions; as well as taking a stand and assuming our individual and social responsibility for the injustices between North and South. If you want to join this movement, sign up for our courses and/or contact us!
At ASAD we do cooperation and education for development and social change in the following geographical areas:
Contact
CIF G-18750844