The project Nature Intelligence in Youth Work (NQ) is aiming at developing an up-to-date and evidence-based concept and approach for an educational opportunity for young people aged 16-25 that is unique in the purpose of raising awareness on the importance of Nature Intelligence as a basic competency element for individual, societal and environmental wellbeing. The concepts contains a NQ competency model for young people in order to increase their engagement, connection and empowerment for contributing to the mental health and wellbeing of young people (Youth Goal 5) and a green and sustainable Europe (Youth Goal 10). Moreover the project is aiming at developing a parallel curriculum for youth workers & trainers, on the basis of the results of the work with youth groups, able to support and increase their competencies on NQ at personal and professional level. The project intends to create a theoretical and methodological framework for a systematic approach of the promotion of NQ in youth work for the empowerment of young people and consequently for their civic and environmental citizenship, including an NQ competency model - O1 -; a manual of methodologies and tools for youth workers supporting the development of the NQ competencies in young people - O2 -; a training methodology (both self-directed e-course and residential training) for youth workers & trainers on the development of youth worker competences for the promotion of NQ young people -O3 -. As part of the activities for the realization of the manual (O2) a testing phase will be carried out in the 5 partners countries involving 200 young people. Two training courses will be run, C1 addressed to the staff in charge of implementing the project and developing the project results, C2 to youth workers aiming at increasing their personal and professional NQ competences connected to O3. The whole concept will be piloted with 200 young people for the experience and testing of the curriculum at local level, and other 25 youth workers involved in training (C2); along with this the activities will be piloted during 5 national multiplier events in Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovenia. The project results will be accessible through the European network and through the information channels of the partner organizations. The Anatta foundation (Netherlands) is the lead partner of the 21 months project, with the 4 partners: Kamaleonte ASD (Italy), Čia Čekija (Czech Republic), Zavod Ambitia (Slovenia) and the IVN foundation (Netherlands).
This project achieved environmental and climate goals, by contributing to the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDG) of the United Nations for 2030. Especially goals 11 &13 have been addressed, which aim to reach climate action and sustainable societies. Besides the call for a more sustainable green Europe by the EU youth, the recent European Green Deal of the EC stressed out again the importance of the need for a shift in environmental awareness and citizenship for the sustainability of the planet and life on it. This project contributed to all of these above-mentioned goals by addressing the human factor in all of these underlying problems. Scientific evidence suggests that for making sustainable changes on this planet for the sake of the environment, the human factor, with all its emotions, thoughts and behaviour should be taken into consideration. The project offered an innovative curriculum that enabled behavioural changes through a strengthened emotional and cognitive connection with the environment. Without a 'Nature-Connection' (NC), behavioural changes were extrinsically motivated, whereas for long-lasting sustainable changes, intrinsic motivation had shown to be the most effective. The Nature Intelligence project developed this intrinsic motivation to be part of a sustainable and green Europe and world, through a stronger nature-connection. High levels of NC have been shown to be strongly connected to improved levels of environmental citizenship, environmentally friendly behaviour and environmental activism. In general there is strong support for the idea that encouraging NC in young people will help to achieve the youth goal of a sustainable green Europe.
We proposed Nature Intelligence (NQ) as a new concept that was able to provide a coherent approach/framework for youth workers and their organizations to implement the multiple arrays of benefits of connectedness with nature in their educational practice. The concept of NQ is related to other non-formal educational concepts, such as the concept of nature connectedness (NC) - which is the extent to which individuals include nature as part of their identity and includes an understanding of nature and everything it is made up of, even the parts that are not pleasing. NQ is, however, a broader concept that addresses the whole array of human functioning (not only cognition, but also emotions, behaviour spirituality) as antecedent conditions for fostering NC and as pathways leading (action) from NC to more environmental awareness and citizenship. The consequences of NQ have been both higher levels of engagement (higher intrinsic motivation), connection and empowerment to develop competences for (1) environmental activism and citizenship (youth goal 5); and (1) individual wellbeing (youth goal 5). In our organisations we saw the need for a coherent and evidence-based theoretical and methodological framework for the development of the psychological connection of humans to nature. There are many tools available, but no coherent framework, nor a competency model, that allows youth workers to effectively address the two youth goals in coherent approaches. This has also been confirmed by the Structural Dialogues by the youth forum that informed the EU youth strategy, where young people called for more high quality environmental educational programmes for youth.