The project aims to raise awareness about one of the most critical issues facing the world today: environmental protection. Throughout this initiative, we will address a range of topics, including environmental sustainability, pollution, climate change, recycling, and sustainable development. Our primary objective is to confront ecological challenges within our societies, emphasising the necessity for adopting more eco-friendly lifestyles and cultivating greater awareness of our daily activities that contribute to environmental degradation. Specifically targeting young people, we aim to inspire them to become proactive advocates for positive change within their communities. To accomplish these goals, we will employ multicultural physical interactions, non-formal learning methodologies, digital education, and both digital and practical outcomes.
PROJECT RATIONALE
The project will focus on engaging young individuals aged 18 to 30 who face geographical barriers, such as residing in urban problem zones or rural and remote areas, as well as those encountering social and economic obstacles. Regardless of that the project is open to all young people from 6 countries that participate on this project: Austria, Latvia, Serbia, Croatia, Turkey and North Macedonia.
The project will address all of the aforementioned topics, working directly with young people throughout four different phases. Active participation of interested candidates is mandatory throughout all of these.
Over the course of the project’s initial phase, we will conduct four transnational exchanges to raise awareness and educate young people. These exchanges will cover various themes:
- Recycling, reducing, and reusing materials to create additional value, including organic agriculture.
- Sustainable Development Goals, climate actions as we as organic agriculture, with an emphasis on promoting modern permaculture practices, micro-gardens and balconies, rooftops, or community gardening.
- Basic audio-video production and digital storytelling techniques.
- Utilising digital marketing as a tool to promote project objectives and the outcomes of participant efforts, thereby enhancing their capacities.
Each transnational exchange will host 18 participants, resulting in 72 individuals educated throughout the project. Generally speaking, an interested candidate is welcome to apply for more than one topic but can not participate in more than two.
Apply today to participate in first transnational exchange in Croatia and Austria on 10.-20. April 2024
Apart from these four mobilities, we will organise in Austria a national Training Course on Proposal Writing, which is mandatory for all the participants. This Training Course should be put to their advantage when proposing their local activities in the next phase.
In the subsequent phase, participants from Austria will form small national groups tasked with synthesising the competencies acquired during the transnational exchanges. These groups will develop their own small-scale projects or initiatives, eligible for sub-grants from the project budget. They will submit “project proposals” for subgranting, which will be evaluated by the project team.
Moreover, Transnational Team Events will gather participants from various countries in an online environment and allow them to share their ideas, aspirations, and support with each other. The idea behind these activities is to promote international cooperation and even participate in local activities in other countries.
The third phase will involve implementing participant-led projects and initiatives. Participants will receive funding from the project budget to cover their costs.
These small-scale projects will be project multiplication events that can last from one day to more than one month, depending on the young people—multiplicators’ projects.
The fourth and final phase considers summoning up the results achieved and distributing them through conventional media and social networks.
As you can see from these four phases, we are looking for devoted applicants and young leaders who can commit to mandatory training courses and online meetings, and develop and implement their local initiatives in their community. This is not to scare you away, and it will not be anything like a full-time job or volunteering abroad, no; it is simply to prepare you for a year-long process that will occasionally borrow a bit of your time and much of your motivation to make our world greener.
Once again, mandatory elements include:
- One of the four training courses on various topics (in 4 European countries)
- A national training course on project proposal writing in Austria
- Transnational team event (online)
- Local activities (in our community in Austria)