Career Gardeners pursued three interconnected objectives: The first was to strengthen the capacity of youth workers to support young people in making value-based career choices. This was achieved by developing a comprehensive e-learning course and web toolkit covering sustainability, personal values, green careers and work-life balance, and by training youth workers across five partner countries to apply the methodology in practice. The second was to directly support young people in exploring the relationship between their personal values - including environmental and social values - and their future professional choices. Through the national Career Gardens, young people were guided through a structured reflective process connecting their values, sustainability concerns and career aspirations with concrete local opportunities and stakeholders. The third was to ensure the long-term availability and transferability of the project results. By developing an open-access multilingual platform in six languages, integrating results into European and national networks, and maintaining the platform for at least three years after project end, the partnership aimed to ensure that the Career Gardeners methodology remains accessible and usable.
Career Gardeners was designed to contribute to Europe's ecological transition by equipping youth workers with the skills and tools to support young people in making life choices coherent with their personal value systems and in building work-life balanced, meaningful and sustainable careers. The project responded to a significant gap: while youth work organisations regularly address sustainability, active citizenship and values, and career guidance practitioners support professional orientation, these two fields rarely connect. Young people were not being supported to link what matters to them personally - including environmental and social values - with realistic career pathways. At the same time, youth workers across the partner countries lacked structured tools and training to bridge this gap in their daily practice. The project addressed the most pressing challenges young people face today: unemployment, the search for work-life balance, and growing eco-anxiety in the face of the climate crisis. By developing, piloting and evaluating an innovative methodology combining values-based career guidance with sustainability education, the partnership aimed to provide practical responses to these needs across five European countries.