Peace

Climate change is usually taught only from the environmental point of view yet it involves a plethora of other issues that are usually overlooked. The main theme of the project PEACE, Psychological and Eco-social Aspects of Climate ChangE, as well as its main activities and deliverables, will be organised around the following 4 climate-change-related blocks according to our main project’s areas and partners’ expertise, namely:

1.From Climate Change to Climate Emergency: Environmental Side (main expert: Permacultura Cantabria from Spain)

2.From Eco-anxiety to Eco-involvement: Emotional Side (main expert: Agrado Associazione from Italy)

3.From Separation to Collaboration: Social and Community side (main expert: Desert Bloom for Training & Sustainable Development from Jordan)

4.From Social networks to Social work-in-net: Digitalisation side (main expert: Education Innovators Kosovo from Republic of Kosovo)

The main activities in the project thus include:
-1 Training Course for 24 youth workers from all of our 4 partner organisations
-1 Youth exchange for 40 young people and 4 youth leaders from all of our 4 partner organisations
-8 Workshops for the staff from our 4 NGOs, 2 in each partner ́s country, led by youth workers who participated in the Training Course
-4 Testing Workshops before the creation of the final version of the Interactive Guide for youth workers entitled „From Negativity to Activity:
Psychological, Eco-Social and Digital Aspects of Youth Work related to Climate Change”
-4 Multiplier Conferences, 1 in each partner country, to share our project ́s results and the Guide with our stakeholders and communities
-4 Consultation Periods, 1 in each partner country, for the youth workers and entities from outside of our Consortium
-8 Follow Up Workshops, 2 in each partner ́s country, led by youth workers who participated in the Training Course for local youth from our 4 countries
-3 Project Meetings for the correct management and coordination of the project

-To exchange and generate transversal knowledge in the field of psychological and social sides of climate change for youth workers from non-formal and in-formal education sector.

-To generate transversal materials in the field of psychological and social sides of climate change for youth workers from non-formal and in-formal education sectors.

-To reinforce the individual responsibility among youth in order to promote responsible behaviour in relation to the consequences of climate change and help them with the emotional distress climate emergency causes.

-To support awareness-raising and action on climate change and emotional well-being through the development and distribution of Deliverable and dissemination materials and events.

-To build NGO ́s capacity and strengthen the cooperation among entities.

-To exchange and generate transversal knowledge in the field of psychological and social sides of climate change for youth workers from non-formal and in-formal education sectors.

• 1st Project Meeting, Kick Off, in Kosovo: EIK
• 2nd Project Meeting, Interim Evaluation, Online: Permacultura Cantabria
• 3rd Project Meeting , Final Evaluation, in Italy: Agrado

Each of them will last 2 days and will be attended by 2 people: project and dissemination coordinators of our 4 organisations. We consider the participation of the coordinating team to be important because they are responsible for the pro performance of the tasks assigned, the deadlines, quality, budget and the general correct implementation.

In Europe there is still little research when it comes to climate change from an emotional perspective, however, Australian Psychological Society in its Climate Change Empowerment Booklet proposed the ”ACTIVATE” approach, which is an acronym for:

A: Acknowledging feelings about climate change and learning ways of managing, and not avoiding, them.

C: Creating new social norms about protecting the environment where ”Green is the new black”. T: Talking about climate and breaking the collective silence.

I: Inspiring positive visions to identify steps to get there.

V: Valuing how restoring climate reinforces our core values. A: Acting, both collectively and personally and feeling engaged.

T: Time is now. Showing climate change impacts on what we care about in order to create a mindset shift. E: Engaging with nature to re-discover the connection with it.

Our Training Course for Youth Workers will include the above mentioned guidance and be based on the
4 blocks scheme from according to our main project’s areas and partners’ expertise, namely:

1.From Climate Change to Climate Emergency: Environmental Side (main expert: Permacultura Cantabria)
2.From Eco-anxiety to Eco-involvement: Emotional Side (main expert: Agrado)
3.From separation to collaboration: Social and Community side (main expert: Desert Bloom)
4.From social networks to social work-in-net: Digitalisation side (main expert: Education Innovators Kosovo)

Its main objectives:

-To share the best practices and techniques regarding the environmental actions and local initiatives projects with ecological approach.

-To transfer the new methodologies and tools to youth people and youth leaders

-To run and live in a practical way the 7 Days Challenge that will be a part of our Interactive Guide and the basis for the future MotiveAction workshops for the youth

The following activities will be implemented in order to ensure a better and more effective availability and sustainability of our project and its results after its end:

-Consultation period opened for other entities and individuals who wish to implement our methods gathered in the Guide: Multiplier conferences attendees will be encouraged to commit to discuss the implementation of our Guide in their work with young people (or other groups in case of introducing adjustments and benefiting from the transversality of our proposal). We will then offer them free guidance and consultations and answer any doubts they may have.

-As we mentioned before, the Guide will be constructed on the basis of an autodidact course, giving its readers the opportunity to implement either the whole package or just selected activities and topics, depending on their needs and co texts. Activities can also be adapted to other target groups due to the universality of the discussed topic and emphasis on working with each person’s everyday life.

-MotivAction follow up workshops: Project participants will be able to try out their newly acquired skills and competences in practice by organising and running for young people from their entities and communities a series of minimum 3 free workshops (offline and online in order to experience both modalities of work presented in our Guide). Workshops will be based on the Guide and experience and best practices from the project and invitations to assist will also be sent to other youth workers from outside of the Project, including those who expressed their interest to use our Guide in their work and
practice.

– New possible projects: with new contacts established through our project and the possibility of introducing new organisations and their expertise to Erasmus+, we will run sessions about a possible continuing project,

-In our 4 entities ́ websites and social media we will maintain the project’s information, Guide and resultsavailable for download, including a short press release with project logo to facilitate further dissemination by Guide users or other interested entities. Why?

According to 2020 Oxford University and Reuters Report, young people are now embracing alternative media sources and this is challenging in terms of catering for different audiences and producing content in new formats. Even some m dia organisations are responding to these trends by taking a clearer stand. The Guardian, for example, has started to talk about ‘climate emergency’ rather than climate change and other publications have started to take more content that is sponsored by NGOs and foundations with an interest in shifting policy choices and this is why we will put a special focus on our online content.

Past 2 years seem to have marked a shift in terms of public and political interest, with more people across the globe, particularly the young, joining demonstrations and strikes mobilised not by traditional sources like television but through networked channels such as FaceGuide, YouTube, and Instagram, COVID-19 situation only deepening it. -Moreover, organizations from our Consortium will include our Guide methods and best practices gained during the Training Course in their everyday model of non-formal education of young people, and the Guide will be used by us to train both our new youth employees and others, being a constant source of easily understandable and publicly available training materials.

In addition, our NGOs will maintain contact with each other as well as with persons and representatives of organizations and institutions who came to our multiplier events and workshops, and will continue to work on climate change in the context of raising awareness and actions among young people.

Each partner will organize 1 in their country and its main goals will be:

– dissemination of the Guide and the project, – getting interest from other entities and youth workers towards our methods of working with young people in the context of climate change and emotions, – establishing contacts and collecting implementation commitments from other entities, – improving the ability to organize events on a large scale by project participants.

It is estimated that at least 30 people will participate, consisting of:

– Each partner’s youth workers
-Other youth workers, social workers, therapists, educators, teachers, volunteers, eco-activists, etc. -Local press
-Associated partners
-Representatives of other NGOs
-Representatives of training centers other institutions working with youth and youth workers
-Representatives of local public administration

Each partner organisation ́s trainers will work on the Deliverables, especially the main one, Interactive Guide.

The main responsibility here will lie on the project coordinators, however, they will also delegate the work to the trainer’s specialists of each field (translators, researchers, etc).

The main tasks to be performed are:

-Researching
-Writing
-Consulting
-Testing
-Translating
-Audiobook creating
-Revising
-Publishing

The Interactive Guide will be available in 2 versions: as a Guide and an Audiobook, both in 5 different languages: English (the project’s working language) and the Consortium countries’ languages: Spanish, Italian, Albanian and Arabic.