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The Youth Association of Terceira Island (AJITER) is a non-profit organization, created in April 2003 and has more than1.500 members. Its main objective is to promote the youngsters’ integration in their own communities. We fight the generalized indifference among our youth and lot has been done since 2003. We have had a social and community intervention in the most varied youth-related areas, ranging from citizenship education, education and health, risk-behaviour and social exclusion prevention, environmental education, personal development, ICT.

AJITER social and economic context is very particular because we are situated in a region composed by 9 islands located right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Our geography dimension situate us in a deep changeling area, special if we consider that youth unemployment level in Azores is above the national, and if we consider our very fragile and small economy where poverty and social exclusion risks are difficult combat in a sustainable and efficient way. It was to overcome this challenges that AJITER born promoting, in a almost weekly base, several youth activities, in local, regional and international scope, such as: youth exchanges, youth initiatives, summer camps and entrepreneurship camps, seminars, sport activities, trainings and workshops, conferences, interviews, youth internships, awareness sessions and local environmental campaigns.

The year of 2009 was a very important step to our organization, mainly because we adopted a new institutional strategy which gave us the opportunity to grow and to raise the importance and impact of our work in the community. We changed our institutional image and communication methods to much younger ones, which allowed us to contact in a different way and became closer to young people. We also launched the AJITER CARD, which is inspired in the European Youth Card but at a local level involving Terceira Island and the other 8 islands of Azores Archipelago. The project has a social and entrepreneurial dimension also towards solidarity goals and raised AJITER’s institutional dimension. AJITER has more than1.500 members and more than 150 partner organizations in AJITER CARD network.

Since 2003 AJITER has promoted a large number of youth activities, in local, regional but also international scope, such as: local youth exchanges, national youth initiatives and seminars under the Youth in Action Programme, summer camps, entrepreneurship camps and seminars, sport activities, local trainings and courses, conferences, congresses, interviews, youth internships, awareness sessions and local environmental campaigns. All these activities had has it main goal the active participation of young people, assuring the cultural diversity, and inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities.

In recognition of our work, since 2010, AJITER was declared as a public interest institution, and since 2012 was recognized has an official NGO in the field of Environment.

AJITER cooperates in a daily base with Azores Government, the City Council of Angra do Heroísmo and the City Council Praia da Vitória and other local and national organizations like the National Youth Council.