Ajuntament de Lliçà de Vall

El Kaliu Youth Centre, in Lliçà de Vall, is not just a youth facility. Is the culmination of six years’ hard work spent defining its purpose, constructing it, and equipping it with furniture and materials. This was achieved with the participation of young people and with the aim of promoting the consolidations of youth participation in Lliçà de Vall –an intrinsic element in local youth policy methodology.
This municipal facility is exclusively for the use of young people in Lliçà de Vall, in the Vallès Oriental area. It is designed to be a place where young people can meet and develop relationships, find information, advice and guidance to meet their needs and respond to their concerns, and allow them to develop personally and socially. It is also a facility from which to plan, design, develop and assess local youth policies. The facility is owned by the town, that is, Lliçà de Vall Town Council. It is located at Passeig de l’Església, no. 1, next to the Municipal Sports Centre, which is itself next door to El Vern Secondary School, the town’s only secondary school. It is therefore located within an area of facilities, along with other facilities and the Town Hall, that comprises the town centre. Beside the Youth Centre there is a bus stop, serving both local and inter-city bus lines.
Lliçà de Vall has a surface area of 10.5 km2, and is located between the towns of Lliçà d’Amunt, Palau de Plegamans, Parets del Vallès, Mollet del Vallès and Granollers, in the south-west of the administrative district Vallès Oriental, on the River Tenes. The town is very widely dispersed, with six urban centres, seven housing estates and eight industrial estates. There is also significant dispersion in sociodemographic terms, which directly affects social cohesion among the population in general and therebefore also young people.
With regard to public transport, Lliçà de Vall is connected to neighbouring towns by means of the Barcelona-Granollers and Barcelona-Bigues i Riells bus lines. Lliçà de Vall has around 6,400 inhabitants, of whom approximately 1,300 are aged between 12 and 30 (20%).

In El Kaliu Youth Centre there are several professionals working in it:
- Youth Worker, who is the technical responsible of the Youth Centre and of every Youth Council Office programme, project or service (37.5 hours/week)
- 2 youth animator (socio-cultural animator; community development) (20 hours/week)
- Administrative support (11 hours/week)
And also:
- Work guidance and advice specialist (4 hours/2 weeks)
- Social educator (social worker) of the Social Services, occasionally
- Programme to prevent drugs dependence (to raise awareness regarding drug abuse) (PPD) technician, occasionally, according to the activities and to the needs
There are other programmes or activities, like sport and cultural activities, which are designed by the different disciplines technical responsible. At least, we try it. It’s usual that the Youth technician is who have to pursue the other technician because they take into account the young people needs or demands.
We have had a good co-operation by the Police in problems about drugs (marihuana) consumption outside El Kaliu.

Implementing youth policies requires facilities specialised in meeting the needs and demands of young people. The existence of a Youth Centre is evidence of specialisation in one sector of public administration, the Youth Council Office, with specialised professionals, budgets and resources.
Lliçà de Vall needs a Youth Centre because it needs a meeting point for the young people of the town. It is important to create structures that bring young people together in face of the territorial dispersion that characterises the town, and there are no privately-run initiatives for young people to make use of, either as a meeting place or to undertake free-time and socio-cultural activities.
The general objectives of El Kaliu Youth Centre are as follows:
- to ensure it is a place for young people to use, meet, communicate, form relationships, hold meetings, organise themselves, have fun, feel free and spend their free time
- to ensure it is a place for developing socio-cultural aspects and ideas or projects created by young people themselves
- to provide leisure, sports and free-time activities
- to raise awareness regarding drug abuse, and promote and develop civic-mindedness
- to co-operate with associations and encourage membership of associations
- to provide young people with information, guidance, advice, support and a place where they are welcome; to raise awareness with regard to the possibilities, organisations and resources the town offers teenagers and young people
- to encourage the participation of young people on all levels, helping them to organise themselves and promoting youth initiatives and services
- to speed up administrative procedures and be able to change the infrastructures, objectives and scheduling of workshops and activities according to the new needs of young people in the town

The facility has different rooms and spaces designed for specific uses, and for different types of projects and services, whilst also being versatile and adaptable to the new needs and ideas of young people. It has a bar/lobby, a multipurpose hall, a games room, an ICT point (Information and Communication Technologies), a Youth Information Point, which also serves as the office for youth professionals, an office, a meeting room, a storage room, a workshop room, bathrooms and an outdoor space.
Methodology is focused on two aspects: the participation of young people in the design, carrying out and evaluation of activities and services, and the participation of the different professionals involved, thereby seeking the maximum involvement of different disciplines for each project and cross-department cooperation within the Town Council.

The regular activities are:
- Youth Information Point
- Youth socio-working information, guidance and advice
- Games educative service (ludoteca)
- Courses and workshops
- El Kaliu bar service youth groups management
- Youth participation process
- “Participation school” (train activities)
- Socio-cultural animations projects
- Audio-visual creation and production projects
- Activities to encourage activities and youths services co-management and activities young people auto-management
- Budgets co-management
- Support and advice to young people associations and young people groups

The Kaliu social and educational project is aimed at all young people in the town, although young people from neighbouring municipalities are able to benefit from it as well.
Each individual action or service is designed with specific recipients in mind. Even though young people of all ages can benefit from the Youth Information Point and the Youth Centre as a meeting point and place to develop new relationships, some projects and services have a more specific target audience. Most projects and activities are designed for 12-17 years-olds, as they are the first generation of secondary school students in the town. The aim is therefore to give them strong social roots, which may lead to the long-term enrichment of association membership and social cohesion within the town.
The young people who make most use of El Kaliu are pupils from El Vern secondary school, young residents of CRAE Santa Maria del Vallès (a children’s residential education centre), located in the town, young users of the Social Services referred to the youth services by their social educator, and young people associated with and belonging to youth groups which are not legally constituted but which organise their own activities.
Generally speaking, El Kaliu Youth Centre is used and enjoyed by young people between the ages of 12 and 25, particularly boys.