We called on our European partners to devise a strategy and offer young people an alternative lifestyle, putting them back on the path to motivation and social integration. We wanted to achieve the following objectives: - Raise students' awareness of the effects of a sedentary lifestyle on health (diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, etc.): get them out of their homes and rediscover a taste for sports and outdoor activities. - Take them to meet other people and learn about other cultures, changing their perceptions of otherness - Make them aware of their screen time. - Develop their critical thinking skills with regard to information found on the internet. - Reinstil in them a taste for healthier, home-cooked food. - In the isolated or underserved areas where these young people live, they feel that social success is not for them because they were not born in the right place or into the right family environment. We also wanted to show them that the local economy offers real opportunities and that they too can become entrepreneurs and succeed. They are not condemned to rural exodus; they can integrate socially where they are.
This project was inspired by the harmful changes we observed in our students since the COVID-19 pandemic: a tendency to withdraw into themselves and psychological distress due to a lack of clear prospects for the future in an increasingly politically and economically confused world. The consequences of this discomfort are: 1. A decline in motivation to learn, self-confidence and confidence in the future, and a loss of meaning. 2. An increasingly solitary lifestyle and a growing addiction to screens. 3. Screen time leads to vulnerability to online hate and fake news, particularly about climate change. 4. In addition, on social media, teenagers see that their lifestyle is incomparable to that of influencers, which depresses them even more. 5. We are also seeing an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, a definite increase in eating disorders among young people, the widespread consumption of junk food, and the growth of what economists call the ‘lazy economy’, i.e. moving around as little as possible and having goods and services delivered to your home.