Who we are

• Promote active citizenship that works for democracy, global sustainability and peace.
• Spread International and Intercultural Education to reach everybody
• Expand the access to Intercultural and International Education; making sure that youth from disadvantaged environments can make use of grants and support to take part in our educational experiences.
• Contribution to spreading ethics and sustainability in society

The fields in which we work are integrated into our programs listed below:

• International and Intercultural Education Programs: we have a great diversity of programs, both Outbound and Inbound that allow the participants to experience a different reality, culture and education.
• Training in global citizenship: we include the concept of global citizenship in all our programs by exposing students to face different issues and encouraging them to find solutions (for them).
• Promoting voluntary service: we promote volunteering and include it in the majority of our programs therefore encouraging young people to make a social contribution to our society.

• We work with the “Global Service Learning” Methodology, or “Learning-Service”, combining learning and development of competences with the improvement of local communities all around the world.
• Personal and direct mentoring during the entire cycle of the project:/span>

Learn (before, training and preparing our participants)
Take action (during the project where we make sure we have an impact on local communities)
Transform (after, contemplating about the learning and talent generated and giving back to the local surroundings)

Origin of AIPC Pandora: The Experiment in International Living: Donald Watts created the organization so that adolescents can get to know other countries and cultures, with the aim to promote understanding between nations and to stand up for world peace. The first group of 23 American adolescents travelled to France in the summer of 1932. “People learn to live together by living together” – nowadays “Building Peace through Understanding”.The name: Association for the Integration and Progress of Cultures, Pandora.

• Culture entails the way in which each of us interpret and understand the world and the immediate reality around us which then defines our way of thinking, (feeling and acting).
• Integration: is understood as a process of understanding new realities, ways of being and thinking and adapting to them without losing our own identities and culture (by stimulating communication and participation).
• Progress is understood as the progress of an individual, and (that of) her or his relationships (with the others), focusing on the constant effort to improve our own lives and that of the others.

“No man can find his own soul until he finds a balance between himself and society” A.Einstein

Prometheus stole the fire from Zeus, the god of the gods in Greek mythology and as a revenge Zeus created Pandora, asking all the other gods to provide her with all kinds of gifts, beauty, intelligence, and so on; Zeus sent Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, so they would fall in love and get married. As a wedding gift Zeus gave Pandora a box that contained all the bad things in the world and he asked her to never open it. But Pandora cannot resist the temptation and opens the box from which all the bad things get out and reach the Earth. She closes the box just in time so that hope can stay inside.
Why the name AIPC Pandora?

• Greece is the foundation of western culture
• Pandora is the first woman in Greek mythology, the equivalent of Eve in the Judaeo-Christian mythology
• The European way of thinking and its values, the democracy and western philosophy originates from Greek philosophers

Occidental values + the hope that stayed inside Pandora´s box = the base of AIPC Pandora.
NThese values nowadays are understood as:

• All the competencies that are published in European programs for young people based on critical, rational and scientific thinking, which then, through experience, produce real learning
• Democracy and citizenship