Collaborate with cooperation projects in your next academic year's enrolment
The UAB has launched a campaign to encourage UAB students to tick the solidarity box in their enrolment for next academic year. On a voluntary basis, each student will give 15 Euros and thus contribute to financing university cooperation projects for the development of Southern countries.
Thanks to the contributions made by students, teachers and administration and services staff, the FAS manages the UAB Solidarity Fund, which finances cooperation projects, activities for education for development and emergency situations.
The projects supported by the Solidarity Fund work with the objective of improving the teaching and research skills of universities in countries of the South and contribute to development in areas such as education, health, environment, gender, food sovereignty and the democratic governance in poorer countries.
Sara Mingorria, one of the students who has benefitted from the Solidarity Fund, is about to finish her doctoral thesis on Environmental Sciences about the impacts of agro-industry in Q'eqchis communities in Guatemala. After three years of fieldwork and another three of writing, she says that “the knowledge obtained will not only be theoretical and published, but it will also become useful for finding alternatives for current development”.
The Peruvian Amazon has been another beneficiary of the Solidarity Fund thanks to the Department of Animal Health and Anatomy, which has worked to fight against the exploitation of this area as an economic strategy by the State and private companies. Pedro Mayor, professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, explains that resources have been assigned firstly to improve sanitary conditions of Amazonian indigenous communities that are harmed by the exploitation and, secondly, to make a more sustainable use of resources by companies.
Other projects such as those in Guatemala and Nicaragua are also examples of where the 15 Euros that students can give when they register are assigned. Also, this academic year the Solidarity Fund was able to help in emergency situations. An example was last November in the Philippines, wherethe UAB donated 2,000 Euros from the Solidarity Fund to Médecins Sans Frontières to help with the consequences of Typhoon Haiyan.
During the 2013-2014 academic year, the Solidarity Fund opened two calls for grants applications, one for teaching and research staff (PDI) and administration and services staff (PAS) and another for students, and has assigned a total of 76,668.90 Euros to finance 18 development cooperation projects in countries such as Mauritania, Senegal, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay and Argentina. In the context of education for development, the UAB gave support to a project for the mainstreaming of food sovereignty in different UAB centres and degrees and a proposal for workshops on communication for development.
If you are a student at the UAB, we encourage you to give the 0.7% of your registration fee for next year and tick the solidarity box to make the contribution of 15 Euros, which will be assigned to the Solidarity Fund. Choose solidarity, choose cooperation!