The Henares River Project, promoted by the Association of Environmental Sciences (ACA), was born in 2008 as a social response to the Water Framework Directive and the promotion of the active participation of the population, through volunteering, as one of the most complete forms of social participation.

The initiative has contributed to the Rivers Volunteering Program, within the River Restoration Strategy, and thus, seeks to give continuity to the work carried out, in addition to achieving the necessary consolidation and expansion of the programmed actions.

More than 1,000 volunteers have participated in the project and eight riverside municipalities have been involved, bringing together more than 500,000 inhabitants as well as other administrations and institutions. It represents a form of river stewardship, which exercises citizen surveillance of the Henares River and a permanent platform for information and dissemination of the values of the river to citizens, in a basin with serious environmental effects but with a vital function of ecological corridor.

The project aims to raise awareness of the environmental, economic, social and heritage values of the Henares River among the administrations, companies and citizens of the towns bathed by the river and its immediate environment of influence, through the development of a volunteering initiative, which will in turn aim to improve knowledge of the Henares River and act on its protection and conservation.