Youth as Agents of Sustainable Societies

2024-1-PL01-KA152-YOU-000231680

 

Erasmus+ KA152-Youth Exchange

Start Date:01-06-2024

End Date: 31-10-2024

EU Grant:34.396,00 EUR

 

Coordinator:

Helios (Poland)

Partners: 

-Climate Volunteers (Türkiye)

-STUDENT ERA (Slovakia)

-Asociatia de Turism si Ecologie pentru Tineret ZIMBRUL CARPATIN (Romania)

-“H2O”-Associação de Jovens de Arrouquelas (Portugal)

 

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/7893195930741226         

Young people need the right skills to lead or promote sustainable practices globally; collaboration and partnerships are crucial in providing them with those abilities. “Strengthening international collaborations is essential for sustainable development and achieving the Global Goals”-Sustainable Development Goal 17 (SDG17). We (young people from 5 countries: PL-PT-RO-SK-TR) came together to respond to this pressing need. After discussing the challenges and needs of our societies regarding sustainable development, we focused on our lifestyle choices and their impact on natural resources, climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, putting the planet at risk, and decided to act urgently to promote sustainable lifestyles in our communities as youth agents for a sustainable lifestyle. However, we had to admit that we needed some knowledge and skills to act as more effective agents such as much knowledge about individual’s or society’s consumption and its impact on the Earth’s natural resources, much knowledge about how to translate their concerns into concrete actions when purchasing goods and services, many skills about hands-on/practical approaches and concrete examples of sustainable daily habits, etc. Collaboration in international projects, e.g., a Youth Exchange would be very beneficial to cover our needs, so we developed our project titled “Youth as Agents of Sustainable Societies (YASU)” aiming to raise awareness about the importance of sustainable living in the future of our world and empower young people with knowledge and skills to become agents of change for a sustainable society. To reach this aim, we will follow the objectives below:

-Increasing the awareness of young participants about the relationship between their consumption choices, daily habits, lifestyles, and natural resources

-Enable young participants to understand the concepts of responsible consumption, green mobility, and sustainable food

-Obtain concrete examples of responsible consumption, sustainable transportation, and sustainable food and help young participants build sustainable mindsets and lead sustainable lifestyles in their own lives

-Strengthening young participants’ competencies and their organizations’ capability in youth work and international dimension and cooperation

-Developing young participants’ skills of communication, active listening, interpersonal, and problem-solving via non-formal and interactive tools, exercises, and games

-Supporting the inclusion of target groups with fewer opportunities

-Guiding young participants in the YE to exchange as many ideas as they could to conduct well-planned follow-up activities to lead their societies to build sustainable mindsets and gain sustainable habits in daily life.

We know it is only a step, but we believe that taking many meaningful steps leads to a real mindset change. We believe that participants of the “Youth as Agents of Sustainable Societies (YASU)’ project will pass on the gained knowledge and thus build more aware local communities around them. And that’s a solid key to success.

During our project, we are implementing the following activities:

-Advanced Planning Visit-AVP in Poland for 2 working days with 1 youth/group leader from each partner organization (total 5) to ensure the quality of the project during its implementation.

-a Youth Exchange in Poland with a total of 8 participants (7 young people and 1 group leader from each country) from Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Türkiye. Participants in this project will be young people, mostly university students between 18-29 who are keen on raising awareness about climate change, sustainable mindset, and lifestyles.