Context Youth plays an important role in the multifaceted challenges that global food systems face. Most of the education currently offered has little room for interdisciplinarity and soft skills, and focuses on knowledge-based single disciplines. The educational system of the high schools should be increasingly complemented with non-formal approaches as experiential-based teaching and learning. This kind of knowledge can be key to give youth the necessary skills to handle the complexity of the food system. Objectives The main objective of the project is to increase the environmental awareness and ecological literacy of the youth by introducing them to the knowledge of agroecology as a holistic science which provides solutions for sustainable environment and sustainable food production. The aim of the project is to support cooperation between CSOs in order to develop and implement informal and innovative educational materials and methods about agroecology. Participants Main target groups of this project are secondary school students from age of 13 to18 years old and educators in the non-formal and informal learning sector. Activities methodology and results In order to achieve the objectives, we aim to produce an innovative educational program in agroecology for youth learners supported by new educational materials, such as a comic book and a game board, which can be used to complement the formal high school educational curriculum. These are O1 - Trainer’s Digital Platform: The educational program will provide different ways and tools to include youth through active learning, in order to obtain valuable knowledge, skills and positive attitudes about the environment, climate change and sustainable food production and O2, Creative Tools for Agroecology: The final result will be a collaborative board game, a comic book, and a set of creative activities for youth learners. The materials will be printed both in English and in the languages of the partners. The process of elaborating these IOs involves direct participation of the target group of the project by means of a vast number of multiplication and learning activities that are tightly connected with the IOs. The multiplier events are designed as special moments offering opportunities to share, test and disseminate the main results of the IOs. These activities will also result in an enhanced dialogue and exchange between learners and between youth educators. There will be 2 types of multiplier events: the first cluster of MEs (E1-10) will target youth learners and will be focused on the creation of innovative tools for agroecology and test the methodology proposed in IO1. The last ME will target trainers and youth educators and will be a dissemination and local training event for trainers. All MEs will be organised in 5 partner countries. The transnational training activities are conceived as an international training tour with 3 stops. Participants of these activities will be trainers/volunteer trainers of partner organisations, and will meet to learn, share and exchange knowledge and practices. The result will be a strong international pool of educators in the field of agroecology for youth, and an increase in knowledge and skills. Impact The project foresees the most important impact on three levels 1. Impact on youth learners and multipliers (educators) will be in providing them with innovative methods, tools and hands-on experiences which could be successfully utilised for the long-term development of the non-formal learning course beyond this project. They will improve skills for analysis of contexts and challenges in farming, with specific emphasis on agroecology. 2. Impact on partner organisations is mainly seen in impact on staff who will gain knowledge and skills on non-formal innovative educational methods in the field of youth education, improving their abilities in educational activities and broadening their international cooperation in the issue of youth education. Staff members will develop their capacities through implementation of high-quality activities for young people in line with EU objectives. 3. Impact on allies, experts, decision-makers and broader audiences will provide this group with understanding the importance to learn about farming via hands-on methods and different aspects of the agroecological systems is a very important step for their acceptance and support, to demonstrate their impact and long-term sustainability. Potential longer benefits The program will be designed and disseminated with the purpose to make the adaptations possible, so allies of the partner organisations will gain and learn from a well-built youth educational program which refers directly to the needs of other initiatives in different European countries. Thanks to the collaboration of the partner organisations with other educational institutions, we expect to inspire and foster implementation of the agroecological topic in their curricula.
1 With this project we wanted to give a contribution to the development of both formal high school education curriculum and informal educational methodologies by creating a substantial and diverse educational curriculum on agroecology focused on the youth. The curriculum is organized and structured to address all the aspects relevant to agroecology as a sustainable agriculture in a practice. 2. Creation of the project educational outputs such as comic and boardgame was the partnership objective to have educational tools which could be applied in their organizational work when it comes to the teaching and learning activities focused on the high school students. As a project team, we we aware that we needed to have helping tools to teach the high school students on such a complex and interdisciplinary matter such as agroecology in a more fun way, without cutting out the important messages. 3. To investigate the reality of creative processes when it comes to applying the art in the educational context. This process and getting familiar with it was an important aspect of the project to build the capacities of the project team to address the knowledge of agroecology in a more interactive and engaging way.
There were three main reasons why we have applied for this project. First reason was the lack of educational material in the high school curriculum on the topic of sustainable agriculture, precisely, agroecology, both as a scientific discipline and as a social movement addressing the systemic changes that need to be adopted to tackle the ecological and climate change issues in agriculture. All the partners have mapped this issue in their countries after they have conducted needs analysis. Second reason was the necessity of the partner organizations to have the tools which could be used to teach high school students on agroecology in a more engaging way, by using the “learning by playing” educational methodology. Third reason was the need to build the capacity of the partners organizations to create educational materials by applying creative and artistic process in the working and teaching processes. The addressed needs were mainly of the focus group of educators and teachers that missed the concise materials on training the agroecological farming and also the need of the youth to get acquitained with the farming in a hands-on approach.