ARCS - ARCI - Culture and Development

ARCS-Arci Cultura e Sviluppo is the Ngo of ARCI, a national association for social promotion founded in 1957. The history and the values of ARCI have their roots in the 19th century tradition of mutual solidarity and people’s self-organizing capacity. At present ARCI has about 5.600 clubs and 1.100.000 members in the whole country.

The commitment for international cooperation and solidarity, childhood and youth, social promotion of women, peace and justice, marks out ARCS’ approach. ARCS is also engaged in emergency situations in conflict areas. European voluntary service for young people is among ARCS’ main field of work, as well as international work camps and traineeship projects abroad for young European students.

ARCS promotes international cooperation projects in many sectors, such as: rural development, post-war reconstruction, health and social care, gender issues, childhood and refugees.

Since its creation, ARCS has been carrying out activities in Latin America (mainly: Cuba, Colombia, Brazil), Middle East (Lebanon, Jordan, OPT) Africa (Rwanda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Cameroon, Senegal), North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia), Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania), tailoring actions on the socio economic needs of local communities. Local institutional bodies are among the stakeholders taken into account in order to ensure sustainability and capacity building.

Middle East: ARCS is committed in supporting the Social Justice in MENA Region campaign, carried out by SOLIDAR, a European network of NGOs ad trade unions ARCS belongs to, promoting decent work and social protection for all. Since 2006 in Lebanon, involved in emergency and first reconstruction in the context of the ROSS program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Arcs has launched in 2011 projects for social development of the community of Aley. The NGO is also committed in the fields of education, employment promotion and support for gender policies, assistance to Palestinian refugees and institutional building with local authorities in the area. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories and East Jerusalem Arcs acted for the prevention of drug addiction and social problems of young people. To cope with the severe economic hardships of the communities that reside around the Wall, development projects has been implemented in the rural village of Beit Doqqu. In Jordan Arcs has worked together with other NGOs to support programs for Iraqi refugees, on gender issues. In 2012 has promoted an intervention in favour of migrant rural workers.

Activities for Water-DROP project: ARCS is in charge of supporting Jordanian partner IUCN in the activities implementation. Furthermore ARCS will be coordinating the implementation of the awareness raising campaign on water consumption in the three countries. In coordination with the Water Right Foundation, the campaign, tailored on the specific situation and pilot projects in each country, will target 18 schools (6 each country), 36 teachers and 2.000 secondary school students, in order to amplify project’s impact.

Personnel

Federica D’Amico 
International cooperation manager, she has 8 years experience in development, working in the field both as project manager and as consultant with mid and long term field missions.
From 2012 she is ARCS’ desk officer for Northern and Western Africa, dealing with a wide range of development projects in many sectors: cultural activities, democracy and citizenship, human rights, rural development in marginalized areas, water supply, renewable energies and related issues.  

During the years she acquired professional experience in:

• Working in multicultural environment, supervising international teams;
• Project design and management;
• Managing external relations with local partner and stakeholders;
• Identification, planning and management of EU and other international donors funded projects.