Deskrizzjoni tal-Organizzazzjoni

"European Village" is a non-profit/non-governmental organisation established in Athens, Greece in 2006.

The aims of the organization include:
-to promote the values of volunteering, tolerance against the different, active participation and solidarity;
-to create awareness of local and global burning issues with a perspective of a fair economy, solidary human relations, and complexity of interrelations when we look at our world from a holistic point of view;
-to promote among young people the concept of mobility, non formal education and life long learning;
-to offer creative leisure time for young people through creative and alternative activities;
-to develop and empower social networking;
-to sensitize young people towards social and environmental issues of today;
-to create an environment where young people can gaining new competencies through active participation;
-to encourage and support the development and implementation of entrepreneurial initiatives towards a more just global and local community(ies);
-to use and promote the fundamentals of non-formal learning for the personal and professional development of young people through educational activities.

Our target group involves the local community where European Village is based, with a focus on young people aged between 18 to 30. The profile of the people we work with and for is diverse, although we emphasise our networking and activities towards individuals, groups of individuals and associations that share our philosophy and values towards a just and sustainable global community. At the same time, we work closely on projects and ideas of fair trade, eco-communities, permaculture, ethical consumption, respect to the natural environment, and social economy.

Our activities vary within the year and are formed by the planning of the members of our organisation but also external people with who we cooperate. We have an horizontal decision making where there is space for all the members to propose and implement activities as long as they fall under our general aims and objectives. Most of the activities we run are for free and in a few cases there is a small symbolical fee to cover the costs.

In more particular:
- We are running a cooperative cafe in the region of Plato's Academy (kafenio), with volunteer work from our members and friends that is mainly used as a social space for the local community and where many of our activities are taking place.
- We are implementing workshops for free including Tai-Chi and Qui-Gong, Vinyasa Flow Yoga, Rythme and Drums, Music (Ipiro's traditions),
-We are implementing educational workshops/events including workshops on "human scale development" - a workshop that addresses economic and personal development through a perspective looking at the community in a fair/equal basis, workshops on Non Violent Communication, Seminars on Permaculture, Workshops on language skills (spanish, english) and computer literacy.
-We are supporting the development of networks of the civil society of the community by offering and facilitating meetings in our social space.
-We create events with expositions of local artists and projections of documentaries, movies and other material that address hot social issues of our global/local community(ies).
-We organise events (festivals, open gatherings, common kitchen events) that promote the use of the park of Plato's Academy.
-We implement and participate in learning mobility activities of European Programmes (Youth in Action, Life Long Learning - now Erasmus +), offering learning opportunities to the local community with an emphasise on its young people.
-Finally, we are members of different networks that work on our field and take part in the form of co-organising, participating or just assisting in the network;s events (including conferences, seminars, festivals etc).