About PILCROW

What we are for

PILCROW empowers young people, children and communities to participate actively in democratic life and contribute to building more inclusive, fair, sustainable and resilient societies through non-formal education, European cooperation, rights-based advocacy, innovation and community action.

That sentence is our mission, and it is also a working test. If an activity does not move someone closer to influencing a decision that affects them, we rethink it.

How we got here

We started in 2020 as a small Valencian association running intercultural learning and volunteering activities. Since then our work has grown into European cooperation projects under Erasmus+ and the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme, both as coordinator and as a consortium partner.

We coordinate our own youth exchanges and youth-worker training, and we bring Spanish grounding, municipal relationships, community networks and youth participation practice, to partnerships led by organisations elsewhere in Europe.

What guides the work

• Rights first. Participation is a right under Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 24 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, not a favour.
• Non-formal education. People learn by doing, deciding and reflecting, not by being briefed.
• Inclusion that has teeth. Being present is not the same as being heard. We measure influence, not attendance.
• Safeguarding as a precondition. No activity runs without clear conduct expectations, consent and a route to raise concerns.
• European cooperation as a method. Problems that cross borders are worked on across borders.

Where we work

We are based in Valencia and work across the European Union and its neighbouring countries with partner organisations, municipalities, schools, vocational training centres and youth networks.