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ENVIRONMENTALity

2020-1-PL01-KA105-0812692020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: PL|IT|AI|TR|BG · Grant: €21,120
Civic engagement / responsible citizenshipEnvironment and climate changeYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

Our planet is being polluted and the negative human impact on environment rises every day. Our fast-paced lives don’t let us stop for a moment to think about consequences of our daily actions and a magnitude of human impact on natural habitat. Nowadays the majority of the human population of the world lives in urban areas and the scale of the deforestation rises. People appreciate comfort connected with living in big cities and the nature may be forgotten in this all. Society generates enormous amount of waste and often the opportunity to think of its consequences is taken away due to pace of living and convenience given in daily life. New generation has a problem which does not lie in the lack of desire to live in a more sustainable way, but in the difficulty of doing it and the scarcity of knowledge how to do it. We are bombarded with conveniences in everything and this is why it is often easier to create waste than to try to recycle and protect the environment. Young people are the future and they will lead our world and it is important to show them how to take care of the planet and how to express the respect to it. If they will be aware of own habits that may cause negative impact on environment, initiate changes and motivate the others to act too, they will have an opportunity to give a chance for nature to survive and grow better. With this project we wanted to change the mentality of some youngsters. We wanted to show them the attitude full of respect and appreciation for nature that was to cause the decrease in after-effects of bad habits related to enormous waste and lack of sustainable living. Our team believed that young people who are motivated to change their own habits, share their knowledge and skills, initiate ecological actions in their communities, are also able to begin changing the polluted world. After defining the central point of the project, we had come to the conclusions that many young people didn’t have the knowledge about sustainable living, they were unaware of consequences of their own habits and they didn’t know how to take action in order to minimize their negative impact on environment. This was the problem that we wanted to respond to with our youth exchange. We came to our objectives and distinguished 3 of them coming from the competence model: gaining knowledge, developing skills and changing attitude. Over the length of the project 25 participants were to: 1. knowledge: expand their knowledge about environmental problems, sustainable living and about how to approach other in order to raise their awareness about ecological issues 2. skills: learn how to raise awareness of environmental problems in others, how to change own habits, learn eco daily practices and take steps in own life in order to live more sustainably 3. attitude: start to respect nature and feel responsible for own actions, therefore be ready to implement changes in own daily life and through that to be a role model in sustainable living for others. Due to the very nature of Erasmus projects, the participants were expected to find benefits from participating in a youth exchange itself. First of all, most importantly, participants had a chance to increase sense of initiative in their local communities and to become active citizens in society by causing a chain of actions that are to benefit everyone after the project participation. They were to share their knowledge and skills with others and skills and to be more ready to initiate activities in order to have a little influence on minimizing human impact on natural habitat. In order to spread awareness among society and improve the condition of the planet Earth, we needed active people who wanted to fight for rights for natural habitat. Through developed sense of initiative competence, young people are now to become responsible, active and involved citizens, confident in their own decisions and taking own ideas into action. Additionally, ENVIRONMENTALity youth exchange was to produce outcomes that meet objectives in Erasmus + youth mobilities. Young people were to develop their foreign language competences. The participation in the project was a great opportunity to find more confidence in speaking and using the foreign language. Meeting new people from various European countries increased their sense of belonging to Europe, it expanded their social network, and developed open-mindedness and intercultural awareness. We also believe that they are now more eager to continue participating in another future international projects.

Project partners (5)