"Start from where young people are" is the youth worker's mantra, and what better place to start than by getting involved in action for the environment? Protecting the environment is important for 93% of European youths, 86,5% of them agree that they can play a role in protecting the environment but 68% of them also feel that citizens themselves are not doing enough to protect the environment - Eurobarometer ( 2017). Green youth's promoters wants to meet this will of active participation expressed by young people providing the youth organizations and their youth workers with needed background of knowledge, ability and skills that make them able to effectively promote and support young people's commitment in the environment protection field. This project represent a common path for the partner organizations where to start from the strong pillars of their previous experience till reaching innovation by the transfer of those experiences from their local context to the partners' one, collecting a fan of best practices created by and for youth workers able to improve the youth services in all the needed steps to support the young people desire of actively participate to the protection of their environment - from visibility and engagement of young people, to tools and methods to promote learning and awareness on environmental issues, techniques to work with young people, types and methods for effective green youth actions to be implemented in the natural environment and in the cities, till how to involve stakeholders and policy makers in those actions, how to make green youth work inclusive and how to support young people entrepreneurship, creating an unique model validated at European level and able to lead to European joint actions, where young people could go beyond their local area to start to think green at an European level. The project will have a duration of 2 years (June 2019 - May 2021); the main project activities will be 4 short-term joint staff training events, each partner organization will manage one of them, for 3 youth workers and/or volunteers from each partner organization (each staff training event will be followed by a phase of local activities for the application and experimentation of the learning outcomes in the partner organizations): they will drive the process of exchange of best practices among the partners, following a progressive path that will start from a theoretical preparation on environmental issues and actions of natural environment protection, passing through a deepening on team building and facilitation to inclusive volunteering, urban green actions and stakeholders' involvement. The partners collaboration will reach its climax with a blended mobility that will involve 5 young participants and an accompanying person per partner and will be held in Palermo with the aim to built a complete and effective non formal learning path on environment protection with a special focus on youth social entrepreneurship about in the green sector. The implementation of the project will be based on a collaborative approach among the partners so each one of them will be responsible of specific actions in order to reach the foreseen results for each project activity. The learning process of the involved youth workers and volunteers will be mediated by the participatory learning and peer based learning in the form of exchange of good practices and actual experiences, learning by doing, practical experimentation of the learning outcomes. The process of application and validation of the shared green methods and tools in youth work will allow to create useful and concrete tool-kit and reports that can be easily disseminated and used by other youth workers from all over Europe and beyond; the project will produce: a final digital booklet containing validated tools and strategies for youth workers' about how to act as "green youth's promoters"; the periodical creation and publication of tools in the form of descriptions and reports; the creation of an e-learning course where the youth workers will train other youth workers on the project results. The project will have a strong personal and social impact on the participants in terms of knowledge and know how on the facilitation and visibility of youth green actions and campaigns, it will improve the quality of the youth work activities and services offered by the partners and it will strengthen their cooperation; the project results will represent a concrete support to the youth work of organizations and professionals and the youth, as target group, will gain in terms of active participation in the protection of their environment, development of tolerance and solidarity and higher sense of entrepreneurship. The actual application of the project results in the partner organizations, the concrete planning of follow-up joint youth actions, the support to young people entrepreneurship will ensure the sustainability of the project.
- fornire agli animatori socio-educativi le conoscenze, l'attitudine e le abilità necessarie per migliorare la qualità dell'animazione socio-educativa, in special modo nell'ambito tematico della consapevolezza e protezione dell'ambiente - rafforzare la capacità delle organizzazioni giovanili di supportare la volontà dei giovani di giocare un ruolo attivo nella protezione dell'ambiente e di supportare la loro abilità di raggiungere, reclutare e coordinare grandi gruppi di volontari, grazie all'uso delle TIC per la comunicazione e ottimali capacità di gestione delle dinamiche di gruppo - promuovere il volontariato inclusivo e la capacità delle organizzazioni giovanili di raggiungere e includere i giovani marginalizzati e con minori opportunità - promuovere la partecipazione sociale e l'intraprendenza giovanile - promuovere lo scambio di buone prassi, metodi e idee e consolidare un network capace di collaborare a livello transnazionale nel campo della consapevolezza e protezione ambientale.
Ben il 93% dei giovani europei ritiene che la protezione dell’ambiente sia importante, il 78% di loro è consapevole che i problemi ambientali abbiano un effetto diretto sulla propria vita quotidiana e salute, e l’86,5% è consapevole di poter giocare un ruolo importante nella protezione dell’ambiente ma allo stesso tempo il 68% di loro ritiene di non stare facendo abbastanza per proteggere l’ambiente (indagine Eurobarometro 2017). Il mantra degli educatori giovanili è "Inizia da dove si trovano i giovani", per cui la protezione dell’ambiente e la consapevolezza ambientale rappresentano un interesse importante per molte organizzazioni giovanili in tutta Europa, e la capacità degli educatori giovanili di supportare le azioni green dei giovani sta diventando sempre più rilevante. Da un'analisi interna al consorzio del progetto relativa alle principali difficoltà identificate dagli educatori giovanili, sono emerse: il motivare i giovani a superare il divario tra l'intenzione e la partecipazione alle azioni volontarie, coinvolgere i giovani in una prospettiva di lungo termine, conoscenze sulle varie azioni sociali ambientalistiche o su come organizzarle, rendere tali azioni accessibili a tutti i giovani.