Environmental and social justice movements are growing globally and are an intrinsic part of influencing decision making spaces internationally and nationally. Nevertheless, accessibility to be an active and politically aware young citizen is often defined by one’s education, geographical placement, class, gender, religious beliefs or privilege in general. This is not an exception in climate action movement. We believe that through utilising popular education and youth empowerment tools it is important to advance youth work for better inclusion of marginalised community members into campaigns, activities and strategic work planning of environmental youth organisations, as well as wider civil society movements in Europe and ensure that we involve voices of those who are least heard in decision and policy making spaces. Through mapping exercise, the project has identified the substantial gap between well established youth climate justice groups and front line communities in Europe which are directly impacted by environmental injustice. Project Youth and Communities for Environmental Justice (YCEJ) will bring together 10 youth climate justice organisations across Europe and will aim to link them with local front line communities affected by environmental injustices. Following this, 3 key thematic issues, affecting key target groups in 10 project countries, will be developed throughout the partnership: 1) Communities affected by development of large scale projects and large-scale land deals ‘land-grabbing’ (including mining and big energy projects); 2) Rural communities whose livelihoods are being threatened by changing climate patterns locally; 3) Communities impacted by the energy transition, such as workers and communities with cultural and economic links to the fossil fuel industry. Partner organisations have been strategically clustered by where one of these issues is particularly pertinent with the expectation that learning developed in these areas can be spread to the wider climate justice youth movement in Europe. Subsequently, capacity of partner organisations will be built through transnational trainings on community organising, anti-oppressive organising and inclusion in groups, as well as 3 theoretical mini-trainings on each issue. 79 participants of the project and learning opportunities will have extensively built their capacity and gained transferable skills for inclusive organising, running campaigns, working with groups and advocacy. As a result of a 20-months partnership, youth organisations, which are based in the major European cities and often outreach youth which has access to education and democratic participation, will be encouraged to involve marginalised people into their campaigning and strategic planning, extremely amplifying their voices in the national decision and policy making frameworks as well as raising awareness on the issues, which are often unnoticed by the general population. The project will reach at least 350 people directly affected by environmental injustice on the local level, who will have a direct improvement to their lives and will be empowered and equipped to actively participate in democratic processes in their countries. This will be accomplished through national and local activities planned and run together with key affected communities in each partner country. On a transnational level youth groups will be building shared analysis on common issues locally and enabling more effective future collaborations to drive change on the same issues on the European level. Beyond the project, we expect: - Partner organisations placed within energy transition topic to further develop activities on just transition and low carbon economy at the regional or EU levels; - Partner organisations placed within topic of rural communities to collaboratively work on future of common agriculture policy debates; - Partner organisations placed within topic of land-grabbing and mining to engage in civil society initiation in developing EU position on land preservation and management. The knowledge built throughout the project will be widely shared with stakeholders through online bank of best practices from transnational trainings and national activities, including at least 5 case studies and 10 tools for organising with affected communities.These will be disseminated widely, through the YFoEE network, wider climate justice movement and externally, reaching at least 20,000 people globally.
Environmental and social justice movements are growing globally and are an intrinsic part of influencing decision making spaces internationally and nationally. Nevertheless, accessibility to be an active and politically aware young citizen is often defined by one’s education, geographical placement, class, gender, religious beliefs or privilege in general. This is not an exception in climate action movement. To change this, we used popular education and youth empowerment tools to advance youth work for better inclusion of marginalised community members into campaigns, activities and strategic work planning of environmental youth organisations, as well as wider civil society movements in Europe and ensure that we involve voices of those who are least heard in decision and policy making spaces. Through an initial mapping exercise, the project has identified the substantial gap between well established youth climate justice groups and front line communities in Europe which are directly impacted by environmental injustice. The project Youth and Communities for Environmental Justice (YCEJ) brought together 10 youth climate justice organisations across Europe (based in Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, North Macedonia, Norway, Scotland and Spain) and created the link between them and the local frontline communities affected by environmental injustices. Three key thematic issues, affecting key target groups in European countries were identified: 1) Communities affected by development of large scale projects and large-scale land deals ‘land-grabbing’ (including mining and big energy projects); 2) Rural communities whose livelihoods are being threatened by changing climate patterns locally; 3) Communities impacted by the energy transition, such as workers and communities with cultural and economic links to the fossil fuel industry. Partner organisations have been strategically clustered to work on the issues which are particularly relevant in their respective national and local contexts. In the first part of the project, nearly 100 youth activists and organisers of the these youth organisations - and several other organisations in certain training events - were trained in transnational training events (including on the three above-mentioned topics) on community organising and anti-oppressive organising, with a strong intersectionality prespective. After having extensively built their capacity and gained transferable skills for inclusive organising, running campaigns, working with groups and advocating their causes, youths systematically involved people of under-represented frontline communities into their campaigns for environmental justice, with the aim of amplifying their voices in the national decision and policy making frameworks as well as raising awareness on the issues, which are often unnoticed by the general population. Partners of the project organised 35 activities at the local or national levels in which they involved over 740 people directly affected by environmental injustice on the local level, and over 1,200 people in total. These activities included the organisation of trainings, workshops, public events and debates, movie screenings and photography exhibitions, street actions and protests as well as booklet and toolkit production. This concretely empowered people from over 15 local frontline communities and allowed them to make their voices better heard and to male their struggles more visible and better known. Together, frontline communities and youth activists reached over 170,000 people in public engagement activities, both physically and online. At the European and international levels, a series of 11 anti-oppressive and intersectionality tools for empowerment were produced and widely disseminated to the network of Young Friends of the Earth Europe, to the community of youth activists in Europe and even beyond. Additionally, five cases studies were also published and disseminated. In total, it is estimated that these educational and communication tools and case studies reached over 25,000 participants. The project created long-lasting relations between the participant groups, the individual participants and local communities impacted by environmental injustices. These links are now strong enough for future cooperation actions. The network of Young Friends of the Earth Europe will continue working with frontline and under-represented communities to fight against local and global environmental injustices, both in current and in future projects.