The project aimed at achieving the following results: - promoting empowerment and activation on climate change of young people in peripheral areas, by facilitating the shift from awareness to active engagement through the implementation of local initiatives and advocacy actions - enhancing young people's skills and competences through a specific training programme on environmental themes as well as on methodologies and tools for community engagement - promoting intercultural exchange between young people of different European countries on matters related to climate change - enable young people to activate the 4 local communities involved in the project - involving citizens and local organizations in the 4 communities of the project in the presentation of reccomendations and concrete proposals to local policy makers, by raising their awareness on climate change issues as well as on the engagement opportunities for local communities' members.
Climate change and its threats bring anxiety and feelings of helplessness, in particular to young people. At the same time, environmental challenges push many youngsters to activism. Studies and field experience show that levels of awareness and activism are not equally distributed between centre and periphery. Urban and rural peripheral area are disadvantaged as far as opportunities for engagement are concerned; peripheral communities are willing to act in relation with concrete local environmental issues, but scarcely aware of the connections between local and global issues. Therefore, the project aimed at increasing awareness and engagement of young people and communities in 4 European peripheral areas (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Romania). The project wanted to address the following needs: a) tools and competences for partners and other organizations to activate young people for climate action; b) for young people, to enhance their competences as community activators in the environmental field, to have more opportunities for engagement, to fight helplessness; c) for local communities, to have more awareness and capacity to engage in order to improve the quality of local life.