What is Fons Català?
The association Fons Català de Cooperació al Desenvolupament is an organisation that consists of Catalan city councils and other municipal organisations (provincial councils, county councils, and unions of municipalities) that allocate part of their budget to fund development cooperation and international solidarity actions with the peoples of the most disadvantaged countries.
Fons Català is an organisation created in Salt in 1986.
It consists of more than 300 city councils and other supra-local bodies that allocate part of their budget to fund development cooperation and international solidarity actions all over the world. Partner city councils encompass 85% of Catalonia’s population, despite representing 30% of all the municipalities of Catalonia.
Fons Català acts as the collective voice of those Catalan city councils that are committed to development cooperation and solidarity with the aim of claiming the relevant role of local governments in the promotion of decentralised cooperation in the global north and local development in the global south.
Mission, vision and values
Mission
Promoting, defending and contributing to the improvement of the development cooperation carried out by Catalan municipalism, organising local solidarity with other municipalities and peoples of the world, and aiming the work at attaining the Sustainable Development Goals.
Vision
Becoming the benchmark space for cooperation and international solidarity in the Catalan local sphere, and a facilitating instrument for Catalan municipalities to fulfil their public policy of development cooperation and international solidarity, meeting their needs, in order to build economies of scale and generate knowledge from municipalist practice.
One of the primary objectives of the entity is to administer and manage the financial resources provided by partner organisations. These resources are used to fund development cooperation projects, education projects for global justice and, when required, humanitarian action and emergency projects.
In order to monitor these projects, Fons Català has two permanent offices in Senegal and Costa Rica. In the regions where it is not possible to maintain a permanent office, the team in charge of each area travel there regularly to visit and evaluate the development of the projects and to keep in contact with implementing local organisations.
Values
- Placing human beings at the centre.
- Fostering peace, justice, equality and equity with a rights-based approach to relations among persons, people, cultures, nations and states.
- Promoting and defending human rights and fundamental freedoms in pursuit of global justice.
- Recognising peoples’ rights to the defence and promotion of culture, language and self-identity, as well as values of intercultural coexistence.
- Defending and encouraging the most disadvantaged peoples and collectives or those who suffer discrimination of any kind, according to a rights-based approach and paying special attention to people with disabilities and mental health.
- Recognising the economic, labour, and social rights of employment, business, and good governance as the basis for global justice.
- Defending the right to migrate and to refuge through safe channels.
- Gender equity and women empowerment.
- Promoting sustainability in economic, social, and environmental aspects.
- Driving and promoting education for global justice through awareness, training, research, and political advocacy.