ProUnionValuesAT – Futurizing democracy, effective rights, strong civil society - interactive, participatory, engaging, winning.

ongoing

ProUnionValuesAT (PUVA) responds to the special urgency in Austria for the protection, promotion, and awareness raising of EU values, fundamental rights and futurizing democracy through a resilient and creative civil society. PUVA seeks to widen the civic space by providing direct grants to third party CSOs who do so in creative ways addressing antagonistic as well as EU distant target groups and to counter with capacity building the often highly emotional and aggressive sentiments in the information space by giving qualified priority to digital CSO initiatives and social media activist organizations. The future of democracy is decided to a significant degree in cyberspace. Much depends on how EU Values are made to count, be respected, and lived happens in the online world. Social media are strong forces in shaping Austrian as well as EU societies and do so in ways which put into jeopardy the democratic functioning of society and the rule of law. PUVA will build out the capacity of CSOs in digital space and support them with smaller but low admin re-granting in using their creativity, commitment to EU values and democratic convictions to widen civic space and strengthen the respect for laws and values. Austrian CSOs are challenged in fulfilling their important roles as many face growing difficulties in securing the necessary funding to develop and perform their activities independently and effectively. The COVID pandemic, highest rate of inflation in EU, and freeze/reallocation of public funding options erode the basis for civil society actors. ProUnionValuesAT supports especially small and grassroots as well as rural and remote CSOs with direct grants for specific projects which make them organizationally more resilient and thematically more focused on EU Values. PUVA will adopt in the capacity building both a co-creation approach and methodologies of experience-based learning with the motto “lived EU Values”. PUVA activities have a 360 degree gender perspective.