The Association for the Integration and progress of Cultures PANDORA was founded in 2002 by people with experience in the field of education, social intervention and international exchanges. At that time we were aware that the increasing globalisation of the world would provoke a social phenomenon quite distinct from those known so far.

When our country entered European Union in 1986 with only ten years of democracy we saw how in just two decades its per capita income nearly tripled. This situation caused more rapid social changes than experienced by our European neighbours: development of a consumer society, changes in the way of thinking and living, changes in family groups, in power, difficulty in integrating the new rules, rights and freedoms experienced by the older generations... all accompanied by the rapid development of communications and information. Finally, we became especially aware that the increasing economic integration on the world stage was not consistent, as it should, with greater political and economic integration, which prevented more and more people from benefiting from this growth but instead forced them to move to our prosperous country to survive.

How to integrate all these changes in our lives? How to prevent and avoid the conflicts arising from them? These questions were at the origin of the creation of AIPC Pandora and helped us to reflect on the concepts on which our actions are based:

- Culture: understood as the way each of us wants to interpret the world and our most immediate reality, which in turn defines our way of thinking, feeling, and acting.

- Integration: understood as a process that we all have to be prepared for understanding and adapting to new realities, both social and cultural, without losing our own identity and culture.

- Progress: understood as the progress of each individual on a personal level and, above all, their relationship with others, in the re-understanding of each other and the world around us.

At that starting point we defined a set of objectives that have been shaped over time. These objectives that encompass all our activities are currently the following:

- To promote the exercise of active citizenship and the rights and responsibilities associated to being a citizen.

- To promote international mobility as a means for personal development, social, and cultural understanding.

- To work for equal opportunities, especially for equal access to education for all people.
 
- To encourage intercultural dialogue and coexistence in the whole social fabric.

Our work, therefore, remains structured in three business areas which have grown substantially.

- International Mobility
-  Education for Development
-  Language School

The task remains immense, but now more than ever, we realise that we are not alone in this. We work with other partners, professionals, and volunteers. We count on the help of all the citizens, who are interested in the lives of all people who cannot live like we live in developed countries.

We also work with bodies belonging to the European Union that support us in our programmes for improvement of non-formal education, for integration, for the popularisation of European values and for the promotion of an intercultural European citizenship. Equally, we work with public bodies on a national, regional and local level, whose representatives are just as involved as we are, or even more so, with the educational and cultural programmes they support.

Finally, we work with businesses - fundamental partners in our line of work - whose directors and professionals are increasingly aware of their capacity and influence on the development of a fairer society and their responsibility when faced with this challenge.