SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 13 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Government of the Canary Islands, through the General Directorate for Research and Coordination of Sustainable Development, and the University of La Laguna (ULL) have presented the BarriODS project today, which aims to promote the application of the Canarian Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 ( Canarian Agenda 2030) in a sample of neighborhoods and towns of the eight islands.
The results and lessons learned from this shared experience will inspire the definition of a working method or guideline that can be disseminated throughout the autonomous community.
Present at the presentation of this experimental project were the rector of the ULL, Rosa Aguilar; the Vice Minister of the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands, Antonio Olivera; the general director of Research and Coordination of Sustainable Development, David Padrón, and the university professor and director of the initiative, Vicente Zapata.
The call addressed to the 88 Canarian municipalities is already open until March 28. It will be possible to participate through the municipalities that are adhered to or in the process of adherence to the Canarian Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030, in such a way that all of them can present a candidacy.
Each candidacy must refer to a specific infra-municipal territory that guarantees the promotion of a community process. The most appropriate scale is the one that corresponds to the category of population nucleus or neighborhood in the most densely populated areas of the islands, which almost always coincide with the municipal capitals or capitals. A coherent and well-founded socio-territorial division will be addressed that includes both administrative and functional criteria as well as historical and identity criteria.
The project promotes a type of social intervention based on the community approach, in which a community is not only the recipient of the actions that are planned, but, above all, the protagonist of the definition and promotion of its own development process. socio-territorial, organizing and optimizing all its potential.
Incorporation into the project implies the possibility of having the intervention of a specialized technical team for six months, a period in which the formation of a reference or motor group will be promoted and their training in each selected location. This group will add the participation of the local associative fabric, particularly the neighborhood and social, an essential requirement for the configuration of each candidacy. The work process aims to conclude with the formulation of a community development strategy at the local level.
The rector herself praised the bonanzas of this project, which aims to permeate the Canary Islands 2030 Agenda in the territories where people live, she pointed out, and which is based on participatory tools and citizen science, she added. Along the same lines, Deputy Minister Olivera spoke, maintaining that the Agenda is not a matter of the Government, it does not belong to any institution, but to the whole of society. That is why this project wants to reach the most micro level of the population, he stressed.
The results of the interventions in the selected localities will inspire the elaboration of a guide or reference manual for the application of the Canarian Agenda 2030 at the neighborhood or town scale. In parallel, the BarriODS project contemplates carrying out a training program on sustainability and the community approach on all the islands of the archipelago.
This is mainly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 11, which aims to achieve more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable territories and communities. Given the focus of the project, collaboration has been promoted with the Canarian Federation of Municipalities (Fecam), which has actively participated in the review of the regulatory bases of the call for the selection of participating localities.
The project will be developed from the Social Innovation Area of the General Foundation of the University of La Laguna, with the academic direction of Vicente Zapata Hernández, a tenured professor of Human Geography with experience in promoting community development processes.
It has a work team made up of three professionals, those responsible for the intervention in the eight neighborhoods or towns finally selected, for the systematization of the experiences for the preparation of the guide or reference manual and for the design and implementation of the processes of training.
