´Co-operation´ is a project that puts together traditions, social sense, democratic concepts, active citizen participation, intergenerational interaction and real connection with our surroundings, to take roots for the future - all this to construct a better place to live in for all of us. It focuses on the recovery of community work in the rural areas, which was so visible in the past with its positive impact on relationships and the place where you live.

Villages in the area of the Narutal Park of Montes Obarenes, San Zadornil, Burgos, north of Spain

There are some points that we would like to develop working in this project:
• To get back to the local tradition of the ¨community work¨ in the villages of our area, known as 'concejos' and transform it to the reality of our surroundings.
• To recover the social sense, that must serve to improve our society.
• To develop the democratic concept and the active citizen participation, overcoming the concept linked only to the exercise of the individual rights.
• Encouraging volunteer work to increase the quality of the community services.
• Create strong relation between citizens, local government and non-government associations not only during the project but for their future work.
• To connect the people from all these villages, to share experience and exchange ideas.

Nowadays the rural area has changed, we find it with a much more diverse and changing reality. People who work in the cities, elder people who spend their retirement, some neo-rural families looking for a different lifestyle, small agricultural farms–few children and teenagers, women and men that guarantee the generational replacement.Our purpose is to emphasize the importance of the participation of all these different people. In the past LOS CONCEJOS were places where only men could participate but our reality shows the importance of women and their active participation in the rural life. In our opinion here we also have to involve children and young people as potential active citizens.
And without a doubt the administration and local governments are the missing pieces in our puzzle.

Our plan is to choose 15 villages, the biggest in the area of the Natural Park. Four work sessions will be organized in each village:
-Previous work session–make a contact with the local governments, NGOs and The Foundation of the Natural Park.
-Meet the working group, present the project and start to interact.
-Prepare a report about the things that will be carried out and present them to the authorities for its approval.
-Execution of the intervention, Evaluation of the team work, lived experience and ideas for next year proposal.
At the end of the interventions the idea is to organize a seminar to get to know the work of everyone, recognize, inspire and build collaboration relationships. Also an exposition will be organized to show the good interventions and give examples.

When we talk about results we think in three main points:
Improve the relations between the people, who are living together – exchange experience is ideal to generate or strengthen relationships of trust and collaboration.
Improve the communication – not only between the people in one village but in all the area. Through these types of projects our local governments can achieve a very significant exponential development and social legitimacy.
Tangible results – we would like to start with small and visible actions, in our opinion this can generate trust in the participants to continue with these kind of actions and convert them in an habit.

We think that this project is a great opportunity to join involvement, experience and social compromise of local people. Citizen participation is at the foundation of democratic values and if we implement effectively our idea, more citizens will be brought into the decision making process, and allows government to be more responsive to community needs.

As Adela Cortina said recently ‘We can´t construct a fair society with mediocre citizens
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Engagement initiatives like this have the ability to build community, grow leaders, and introduce a more collaborative style of life and government.

This idea is important for us because in the last few years we observe that some changes in our society are necessary- we need it united, resilient and active to face the difficulties we are experiencing.We don´t want to observe how our rural area is turning off. It has a big potential and we have to take advantage of it.

Work sessions- 30.000 EUR
Materials- 4.500 EUR
Transport - 3.500 EUR
Promotion and design - 3.500EUR
Exposition expenses - 6.500EUR
Seminar expenses- 2.000EUR

Exchanging experiences with other similar projects will be so useful. Take advantage of your network of great ideas and active people is indispensable.