Organization summary:  

Full name of the organization and short name: ISTITUTO PACE SVILUPPO INNOVAZIONE ACLI (IPSIA) 

Full Address: VIA MARCORA 18/20 – 00153 ROMA 

General Contact (phone, mail): +39 02. 77 23 227 , ipsia@acli.it 

Brat Contact:  

Telephone: +387 60 35 56 897 

Email: ipsia.brat@gmail.com 

Website: https://www.ipsia-acli.it 

Socialmedia profiles:  

IG: https://www.instagram.com/ipsia_bih/ 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/ipsia.acli/ 

Mission and Vision: 

IPSIA (Acli Institute for Peace Development and Innovation) is an Italian NGO founded in 1985 to promote human rights and sustainable development on international basis. Our commitment to peace, solidarity and justice has been translated into projects of development, volunteering promotion, global citizenship education, in Italy and abroad.  

Mission: 

IPSIA’s main mission consists in building solidarity links among different communities.  

IPSIA’s activities are mainly addresses to young people and their need for orientation for their future, in a frame of commitment for a sustainable development, for civil coexistence and for peace. 

IPSIA operates in Italy, Balkans and Africa, focusing on three 3 thematic fields: Development Cooperation, International Volunteering and Education. It startedworking in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1997 to support the reconstruction of war torn houses, to provide psycho-social support to victims. In the following years, IPSIA participated in tourist, ecology and community-growth projects in area of Una Sana Canton. Since 2918, it is working to provide psycho-social support and humanitarian assistance to the people on the move, outside and inside temporary reception centers. 

Vision:  

IPSIA pursues civic, solidarity and socially useful purposes and specifically aims to: 

– promote development cooperation initiatives with relations between international and Italian communities at the centre, supporting access and promotion of rights, processes of inclusion and social cohesion 

promote initiatives of cooperation for development, understood as community cooperation, which places as a nodal point the relations between international and Italian local communities, based on partnership in a constant commitment to access and promotion of rights and processes of inclusion and social cohesion; 

– promote foster public awareness of peace and development issues; 

– promote international voluntary service initiatives, complementary to development cooperation projects, capable in turn of promoting participation and voluntary commitment and , relations between the communities involved, it provides an organised space for its members, service operators, civil society organisations and the initiatives they promote, and for citizens in general. 

What we do: 

Agriculture and food security: IPSIA promotes forms of family and village agriculture that allow the development of local communities and reduce migratory pressure towards cities, especially in Africa, protecting territory, biodiversity and development of local production chains.  

Environment: this theme is particularly central in the interventions in the African area, where the scarcity of natural resources often reaches alarming levels, and in the Balkans, with regards to protected territories like the Una National Park in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

Conflicts and refugees: IPSIA has intervened in several occasions, starting with the victims of conflicts in the area of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and lately in support of the Ukrainian population.  

Human rights: Respect for fundamental and universal human rights, through projects, campaigns, lobbying and information, is the key element of IPSIA’s mission and is a key element in the process of overcoming conflicts and equitable redistribution of resources on a global scale.   

Global citizenship education: Global Citizenship Education, a founding part of IPSIA since its inception, is mainly applied through the initiatives and projects of the Italian branches. 

Education and professional training: the human and professional training of people, and in particular of the youth, is used for the development of countries across projects, as a resource for local capacity building and the sustainability of interventions. 

Social entrepreneurship: Understood as a form of approach to the economy that combines corporate sustainability with attention to the community and the environmental context, this theme is mostly developed in Africa. 

Migrations: characterising the entire history of humanity, migration today involves more than 200 million people on a global scale, with relevant social, cultural and economic dimensions involved. IPSIA has been working along the Balkan route since 2016, first with humanitarian interventions and later with psychosocial interventions and the opening of social cafés in Serbia and BiH. 

Volunteering: considered as a privileged opportunity for active citizenship, participation in social life and growthy, especially for young people, volunteering is of great importance for IPSIA projects “Terre e Libertà”, “Football No Limits” and the “Universal Civil Service” promoted by the Italian State. 

BRAT Activities: 

IPSIA is the leading organization of the project BRAT and beside the coordination role over the other organizations, implement specific activities in particular in the mucipality of Bihac, Una Sana Canton, through the branch office of IPSIA BiH.  

IPSIA is responsible of the psycho-social activities in Social corners in TRC Lipa and TRC Borici, construction and opening of the Safe house for vulnerable categories in Bihac, support to the local vulnerable community, inclusion program between local and migrant population, communication, advocacy activities, sport events…