In a first step, we wanted to enhance the educational capabilities of our organisations, including our educators and volunteers. Through our cooperation in the development of an entirely new training, we aimed to develop new skills and tools that our organisations can continue to use, even after this project has concluded. Secondly, we wanted to motivate other civil society actors to engage with this topic, participate in the trainings and maybe give the trainings themselves in the long term. Both partner organisations are embedded in a broad network of CSO's that play a crucial role in enabling citizens to participate in public debates. Through these networks, our new training can reach an even broader audience. Thirdly and most importantly, our aim was to reach a group of citizens who already have an interest in ecological, economic and social affairs but who lacked specific, prior knowledge of the European Green Deal. We aimed to give these citizens an improved understanding of the Green Deal, its financing mechanisms and possible alternatives. These citizens could thus be empowered to engage in the debate on the green transition, be involved in the European project and contribute to achieving a more just, green transition.
This project’s main goal was to fulfil a need for citizens to have transparent and accessible information about the European Green Deal and its impact on what type of transition is created in Europe. We believe that educating citizens about the Green Deal is a crucial step to enhance civic engagement and participation. If we want citizens and civil society actors to participate in the European project and in the green transition, they need to be sufficiently informed and knowledgeable about the current policies, and about possible alternatives. Secondly, the project also addressed the needs of the partner organisations to translate our extensive research work into actionable, useful output. In this case, the training and videos. The project thus strengthened both organisations in the long run by allowing us to create such actionable output and by allowing us to learn from each other on how to produce qualitative and innovative trainings on complex issues and to develop new skills in our educational activities.