The concept of community urban gardens originated in New York (Chitnov, 2006, and the term describes a garden operated by a community (Rosol, 2006). Rosol, (2006) defined community urban gardens as gardens which operate jointly and through volunteer commitment. They are not owned privately but are focused on the public. The garden will often have rules. The growing areas are usually cultivated collectively or individually. The garden is often open to the public for an appointed time although some gardens work with youth and vulnerable people. Community urban gardens are an inclusive environment as they accept people from all social strata (Draper and Freedman, 2010; Corcoran and Kettle, 2015), which includes people with addictions, vulnerable youths or in danger of marginalization, people with disabilities, or a refugee background (Augustina and Beilin, 2012; Shan and Walter, 2014; Chan et al., 2015; Christensen, 2017). According to Müller (2007), intercultural gardens bring together youth local people. The gardens are open to people from all sections of society, who would like to cultivate fresh produce or flowers. Ideals such as a concern for others, strengthening diversity, and participation are practiced in these gardens (Moulin-Doos, 2014). Inside the gardens an exchange of produce, seeds and recipes takes place. The activities can include the construction of garden sheds, community rooms, small green houses, polytunnels, playgrounds and communal ovens. Community gardens are proven to reinforce ties to one’s environment (Comstock et al., 2010) and increase food access and food security. Community gardens provide an opportunity for people to grow their own food with greater control over the environment and inputs used in the growing process. This empowers individuals to change their own lives and physical environments while increasing their access to fresh produce and open space. The URBANITE project will encourage active participation and education the local community members, through setting up and maintaining the urban gardens. The main aim of the project is encouraging active participation and education of the local community members, including disfavored and threatened of exclusion youth people and local youth eg. migrants, seniors, long-term unemployed people, through setting up and maintaining the urban gardens and working in this common garden space. In the same time, through the workshop designed youth will operate an urban organic garden naturally, growing produce for the local community while developing leadership and job skills. Additionally, the project aims to elaborate an innovative educational method to teach soft skills by garden working to future youth farmers, e.g. interpersonal communication, team work, management, planning. We believe that urban gardens are places where social cohesion and learning could be strengthened. The set goal will be achieved by creating a training approach, an adaptable method; and developing an experimental garden as innovative space of the active pedagogy that encourage the combination of skills and knowledge, sharing of reflection, learning process and collective creation in favor of social intergenerational and intercultural links. Partners will develop the training modules for practitioners with the aim of increasing their skills in supporting vulnerable and threatened of exclusion youth. In the project, we also foresee the training for trainers from partner institutions to test and embed the elaborated training method and ensure the efficient implementation of its testing phase in the experimental gardens in partner countries locally, in the work with project’s target group - disfavored and threatened of exclusion youth people. Project’s consortium believes in investing in young people to support community development, and recognizes the relevance of youth work to mitigate social exclusion among young people. We will try to show that establishing and working in the urban gardens is a way to social inclusion, dialogue, sustainable lifestyle, collective knowledge, community spirit and solidarity. Within the project will be developed a web-based Training and an App compatible both with desktop and mobile devices, which will include case studies and training modules providing the nowledge needed to create and urban garden, offered spaces, how to turn an urban garden into a meeting point for social integration and a career guidance for future youth urban gardeners handbook. The objectives of the URBAN project: • To develop training and learning resources which support the professional development of new and existing Practitioners and Educators in the field of adult teaching. • To actively involve local milieu youth people threatened of marginalization. • To develop a training method, programme and methodology, including the training module, based on activities connected with setting up and maintaining the garden
Its main aim was to encourage the active participation and education of local community members, including disadvantaged and excluded young people and local youth e.g. migrants, elderly, and long-term unemployed, through creating and maintaining urban gardens and work in this common garden space. In addition, the project aimed to develop an innovative educational method for teaching soft skills through an e-learning platform. The partners developed training modules for professionals to increase their skills in supporting vulnerable and at-risk young people. The EU Strategy for Youths – Investing and Empowering (2010-2019) had the main objectives: To provide more opportunities for marginalized youth in training and in social inclusive activities To encourage unemployed youth to actively participate in sustainable environment knowledge and empower them to get involved in urban agricultural activities. To empower youth to be actively involved in urban space
The idea of the URBAN project was created based on the common need of the partner's organizations to develop an urban ecological culture among youth on a national and European level. For all partners, the development of urban gardening and youth awareness on the field should be regularly on the agenda of all European countries. The innovation of this project is the development of qualification and training material for urban gardening along with an innovative app for their networking and engagement on a national (in participating countries) and European level. The URBANITE project encouraged the active participation and education of local community members through creating and maintaining urban gardens. His main goal was to encourage the active participation and education of local community members, including disadvantaged and excluded young people and local youth e.g. migrants, elderly, and long-term unemployed, through creating and maintaining urban gardens and work in this common garden space.