About us

Agirre Lehendakaria Foundation was launched with the purpose of funding the activities of Agirre Lehendakaria Center – ALC and sharing its knowledge not only with Basque society but also further afield. ALC is a collaborative project inside the Excellence Campus of the University of the Basque Country (Euskampus), created in partnership with prestigious North-American universities, such as Columbia University in New York.

Its main goal is developing supplementary activities that will allow Agirre Center to identify potential future challenges as well as facilitating the country’s exposure to new realities and promoting a Basque presence in the world.

The foundation takes its name from Jose Antonio Agirre y Lekube (1904-1960), the first democratically elected Basque President. He was a professor at Columbia University and remains a constant symbol of the struggle for democracy against totalitarianism.

Goals

Main goal. Agirre Lehendakaria Foundation seeks to share with the Basque society as a whole the research and intervention projects carried out by Agirre Lehendakaria Center. At the same time, the foundation wants to encourage and spread different projects that analyze in depth the issues that could affect the Basque society in the future, by stimulating innovation and permanent change and facilitating the opening of the Basque country to new social and economic realities, as well as new governance models.

Specific goals:

  • Establishing a permanent agreement with Agirre Lehendakaria Center, in order to share the results of its projects and programs with the Basque society.
  • Sharing the Basque Case as a model for sustainable human development in the US in order to provide both local and global answers to future challenges.
  • Sharing the competitive position of the Basque Country internationally, with a network that promotes and encourages all kinds of activities related to Sustainable Human Development.
  • Creating an international network of highly regarded collaborators that includes enterprises, universities and social institutions, all of them based in the US, and specialized in the areas of interest for ALF (such as politics, sustainable development, conflict resolution, self-government, environment or peace-building) with the aim of developing several projects.
  • Identifying and attracting the most successful cases and experiences worldwide that can help the Basque Country to search for solutions to the main political, social, cultural and environmental challenges, as well as exploring new potential scenarios and strategies that could favor the growth of the Basque society, balanced with the environment and the Sustainable Human Development.

Get involved

From the beginning Agirre Lehendakaria Foundation has managed to carry out remarkable projects that have fostered the Basque brand internationally, thanks to the effort, collaboration and compromise of the foundation members. We intend to continue our work and for this reason we would like to invite you to join us at Agirre Lehendakaria Foundation. Join us filling this form.