Youth Coop is a non-profit cooperative of youth work professionals based in Agualva-Cacém, Sintra, running local and European projects on citizenship, sustainability and youth empowerment since 2018. It manages CircuLar, a circular economy community house, runs volunteering through the European Solidarity Corps and takes part in Erasmus+ youth exchanges.
Youth Coop is a cooperative for development and citizenship, founded in 2018 and based at the Centro Lúdico das Lopas in Agualva-Cacém, in the Sintra area. It brings together youth work professionals who run programmes for people aged 13 to 30, with a particular focus on those with fewer opportunities.
The cooperative organises its work around three themes: environmental sustainability and the circular economy, community and human rights education, and the professionalisation of youth work itself. It runs CircuLar, Casa da Economia Circular, a community house in Mira Sintra dedicated to reuse, recycling and environmental regeneration, where it holds composting workshops, repair sessions and creative reuse activities open to the wider community. Discarded tyres become planters, broken tiles become mosaics, and leftover construction materials get a second life in the group's public space interventions.
Since 2018, Youth Coop has run UrbanAct, a youth volunteering programme for environmental action in urban areas, bringing together young people from Portugal, Germany, France, Spain, Poland and Italy for 22-day placements through the European Solidarity Corps. It has also taken part in Erasmus+ exchanges such as Stories in Motion, which introduced young participants from five countries to videography as a tool for civic participation, and contributes to Casa-Árvore, a project developing a mini-forest and ecological art interventions in public space under the No Planet B programme run by Fundação AMI.
Governed as a cooperative, Youth Coop is run by its worker-members under democratic rules, with around ten people currently involved. It welcomes new volunteers, professionals and partner organisations to join its activities in Sintra.
Our Goal
Youth Coop works to build young people's personal and social skills through youth work, non-formal education and community-based projects in Sintra, Portugal, aiming to grow into a dignified, cooperative-run field of youth work across the country.
Our Wishes
The cooperative is looking for volunteers to support its CircuLar community activities, professionals willing to join as cooperative members, and organisations or businesses open to partnerships, in-kind support or funding.
