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KEC's mission is to create and offer innovative services and programs for people with intellectual disabilities so they may live fulfilling lives of independence and quality in their homes and communities. KEC is a civic organization that strives to meet the needs of people with disabilities in order to improve their position in society, secure a high quality of life and realize positive social change so that people with disabilities will be accepted as equal members of society. Our vision is to be a synonym for an NGO that is constantly raising the standards in the field of social welfare, improving the quality of life and degree of social inclusion for people with disabilities, realizing their human rights in the fields of employment, social welfare, health care and culture as well in the realm of raising public awareness. We aim to constantly be rethinking how and why we deliver services to our community to make sure that they are relevant and meaningful. KEC was established in 2002 in order to ensure that young adults with intellectual disabilities have the opportunity to participate in the community and that their on-going educational and social needs are met. All of KEC's programs are developed in close partnership with our beneficiaries and their parents and guardians. In response to this vital input, KEC is constantly creating innovative programs or reshaping existing ones to meet the new interests and challenges of its beneficiaries. We work with the community to build a partnership that fosters acceptance and strives for inclusion. KEC is committed to enhancing the quality of life, and realizing the potential of all people with developmental disabilities. KEC mission is fulfilled through three primary program areas: a day center, work programming and a social enterprise. The day center was KEC first program and has been running since the organization's inception in 2002. Today, KEC is fortunate enough to provide this program in a modern new facility located in the center of Belgrade.This large and well-equipped facility was made possible through the joint efforts of the City of Belgrade and the U.S. Department of Defense. Both of these institutions recognized KEC's important and unique contribution to the lives of people with special needs in Belgrade and joined forces to create this truly special facility. As a result of its high caliber program KEC's day center was accredited by the Serbian Ministry of Labor, Employment, Veterans and Social Policy. This accreditation is further evidence of KEC's distinctive work on behalf of people with developmental disabilities. In order to ensure that people with special needs are truly a part of the larger community in 2004 KEC embarked in a program to build partnerships with the business community. The program started with McDonald's and has grown to include over 30 companies, institutions and organizations across Belgrade and almost 200 beneficiaries. Based on the company's needs KEC matches its beneficiaries with work placement positions. KEC provides all the necessary forms of support, training and evaluation. Its experience in creating and implementing this program made it possible for KEC to become the licensed trainer for such programs in Serbia. Today KEC helps other organizations implement similar programs in their communities. Finally, in an effort to strive for financial self-sustainability KEC launched a small enterprise, Gardenika, to produce natural snack foods. The enterprise's fruit rolls are sold in stores and markets throughout Serbia and can be found in corporate cafeterias and in their PR packages. In addition to providing jobs for KEC beneficiaries any profit will be channeled back into the NGO. Overall, KEC aims to ensure that people with intellectual disabilities living in the community or returning to the community after a life in an institution have meaningful fulfilling lives. We shape our programs around the users needs and desires. The Serbian government is working towards closing down its massive network of institutions providing long term residential care for people with intellectual disabilities. So on the one hand it must find a way to prevent more people from entering the institutions and on the other hand work to create and support programming for those who are leaving the institutions. KEC's activities are a best practice model for achieving both of these goals. The organization supports families so they can keep their loved one with special needs at home and helps those leaving the institutions to fill their lives with interesting and meaningful programs when they rejoin the community.
Protection and promotion of health and life; social inclusion; Prevention and emergency response; Promotion of International Humanitarian Law and International Cooperation; Youth development and culture of active citizenship.
Board of European Students of Technology is a non-profit and non-political organisation that since 1989 strives to improve communication, cooperation and exchange opportunities for European students. The mission of BEST is to help students achieve an international mindset, reach a better understanding of cultures and societies and develop the capacity to work in culturally diverse environments. To achieve this mission BEST offers high quality services to technology students all over Europe. These services include a European engineering competition, academic courses, career events and events on educational involvement. BEST offers these events in 96 European Universities, spread among 34 countries, reaching over one million students, with the help of 3300 members. It is BEST's mission to provide complementary, non-formal education in every event that it organises. This to make sure that the students that are reached grow to their full potential before they enter the job market. It is essential for BEST to show students the value of complementary education, not only to widen their perspective on the technology topics covered in their studies, but also to teach them the needed soft skills. To begin, these soft skills are covered in BEST's events by bringing students together with its two other stakeholders, universities and companies, and letting them dialog. Secondly, BEST provides specific training sessions to teach students how to acquire these skills in a safe and stimulating environment among peers. Lastly, this is done not only towards outside students, but also towards BEST's own members. By letting them organise events after they had a thorough knowledge transfer and did some in-depth training sessions, they acquire a lot of hands-on experience that makes them valued assets on the job market. In all this soft skill acquirement, there is one thing that makes BEST special: everything happens in a culturally diverse environment. BEST's volunteers really learn how to cooperate with project members from all over Europe and also the outside students are introduced to a specific mindset that BEST likes to call 'the BEST spirit'. This means that everyone works together, respecting each other's backgrounds, to achieve a common goal: empower students and give them a voice in today's society. For this donation campaign BEST would focus on the educational involvement that it stimulates among European students. It is namely very unique that an organisation run by students offers their peers a voice by collecting data in surveys and events and presenting that data to the relevant authorities. BEST, therefore, attends a lot of conferences about education to be able to share our outcomes to the fullest. We hope to raise some donations in this campaign to be able to carry out next year's planning around the theme of Digital Literacy. This theme focuses on how prepared students and universities are for the upcoming digitisation wave. It raises the question of how we will learn and teach digital skills and how industry 4.0 will make its way into our education. For this program BEST invests in conducting surveys, doing symposia on education and writing scientific papers with the purpose of disseminating the outcomes. It is not the first time that BEST is going to conduct such an Educational Involvement Programme. Last year, for example, the theme was 'Diversity in STEM education' and the years before we covered topics such as pedagogical skills, new teaching methods, relation between university and industry, etc. So what were the steps BEST undertook to create all the materials around last year's topic? First, a team was created to do research on existing literature about 'Diversity in (STEM) education'. Based on that research a survey was created in which 4 diversity types were tackled: cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, gender diversity and students with disabilities. Then, after the answers of the survey were gathered and analysed, the subtopics for the BEST Symposia on Education were identified: in this case, each symposium had a different diversity type. The same team that worked on the content creation of the symposia also prepared and delivered the sessions of those symposia. After the events, the input of all the participating students is gathered in a scientific report, which is then either published in conferences, or disseminated through social media and newsletters. The approach used last year proved to be a successful one and will be repeated in this year's Educational Involvement Programme. If we manage to get more funds via Global Giving, this will mean that we can elaborate this process and spend more resources on content creation, promotion of the surveys and dissemination of our results. In short: we will be able to make a lot more noise in the educational world.
Global Changemakers works to an unshakable mission of supporting young people to create a positive change towards a more just, fair and sustainable world. We do this through skills development, capacity building, mentoring and grants.
Zahana in Madagascar is dedicated to participatory rural development, education, revitalization of traditional Malagasy medicine, reforestation, and sustainable agriculture. It is Zahana's philosophy that participatory development must be based on local needs and solutions proposed by local people. It means asking communities what they need and working with them collaboratively so they can achieve their goals. Each community's own needs are unique and require a tailor -made response