The overarching goal of LANTERN was to promote and facilitate the active participation of youth in the transition to renewable energy (RE) by fostering collaboration between Portugal and Greece. Through its implementation, the project aimed to: 1. Provide knowledge and skills to youth enabling their active role in the energy transition, and in building regenerative communities, synergies and transnational cooperation. 2. Foster intra and entrepreneurial competencies for the development of projects, and support the integration of RE in them. 3. Build capacity and empower youth to design and build RE systems using practical do-it-together methods. 4. Develop "green skills" and highlight new vocational pathways for participants. 5. Promote the involvement of youth with fewer opportunities in European projects and skills training. The project also supported the wider organisational objectives of the partner organisations: 6. Building capacities in participants from Portugal and Greece, enabling the replication of the educational activities to a wider audience. 7. Building capacity in members of the 2 partners to engage and build their networks. 8. Building the partners' capacity to design, manage and deliver European-scale projects
The project partners believe it is essential to develop alternatives that build practical skills and create vocational opportunities that target geographies with fewer professional opportunities, namely, rural areas or regions with uncertain and unstable employment (such as areas heavily reliant on tourism, like Greek and Portuguese islands and Southern Portugal). The main motivation for this project was to respond to the need for more opportunities for active citizen and youth participation for a just energy transition, while creating a unique opportunity for the project’s partnership to test and adjust their educational content and methodologies that inspire active engagement in community renewable energy initiatives. In shaping a new transnational collaboration and engaging with a new target audience, the project followed an approach that blends theory-based sessions with hands-on, practical workshops to foster participants' creativity and problem-solving skills through a range of topics including Renewable Energy technologies for community-based projects, resource mobilisation, social business, and case studies of existing community-led initiatives and workshops to design and build simple solar energy systems.