The university for NGOs
We are the university for NGOs, the charitable initiative of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC). We run training, research and awareness-raising programmes for social and humanitarian ends using e-learning methodology to improve people’s living conditions.
The UOC’s Campus for Peace was created with a view to contributing to peace, providing solidarity to less favoured people and societies, for development cooperation, humanitarian aid and sustainability, founded on ethical principles based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Earth Charter. Essentially, the objective consists of helping provide people with knowledge to make them independent, able to solve their own problems, defend their basic rights without violence and co-exist peacefully.
We work in alliance with other universities, NGOs, governmental humanitarian organisations, foundations and all kinds of private and public organisations with similar objectives and ethical principles that have mass distribution networks and the capacity to act with the end users of the aid.
Training, research and awareness-raising
We at the Campus for Peace are a team of multidisciplinary professionals from the UOC, a pioneering, benchmark e-learning institution founded in 1994. We are the university for NGOs, using information technologies for research and education in the field of humanitarian work.
The Campus for Peace promotes state-regulated training and skills provision in: development cooperation through the Virtual School of Cooperation, environmental education through the EcoUniversity and peace studies through the University Network for Peace and Conflict Resolution. It organises get-togethers for experts to establish common strategic and tactical plans in fields such as those mentioned above, to establish operating networks and publish of innovative content in the fields of Human Rights, Conflict Resolution and the processes of Peace, Environmental Sustainability and International Cooperation.
University education is usually governed by education laws during the early years of education and by the market in terms of postgraduate education. At the Campus for Peace, we are governed by humanitarian criteria and ideals. We are, therefore, the Humanitarian University, the university for NGOs, the University for Peace.
The training that we offer reaches over three thousand students and over two hundred lecturers and we offer hundreds of subjects in all fields of knowledge.
Social and humanitarian application
We believe in and transfer knowledge with a social and humanitarian application with a university, virtual and universally accessible perspective. At our campus, we offer flexible academic administrative programmes and trainer training courses, continuous educational assessment, expert volunteers from around the world and specific teaching materials.
We collaborate with organisations such as the Red Cross, Engineers without Borders, Amnesty International, Gaia Education, UNITAR, PNUD, the World Organisation of the Scout Movement, numerous universities throughout the world, town and city councils and citizens’ associations.
Virtual Campus
Through the Virtual Campus we promote humanitarian action: we facilitate distance education for the defence of human rights; we foster access to useful resources to develop literacy, education and access to healthcare; we offer funding possibilities for cooperation projects in the field of development and we put people around the world in touch with one another who have a joint desire to participate in conflict resolution processes.
