When: Throughout 2018

Where: Czech Republic and various countries

Who: Youth and Environment Europe

Project description:

With this project we want to focus on youth participation in environmental decision-making on different levels: international, national and regional. Documents and international agreements about environment seem to be very distant from everyday life – which can demotivate and discourage young people to even read such documents. Many young people think that they cannot influence their politicians or do not know how to do it. With this project we want to provide youth organisations with competences on how to educate young people about active citizenship as well as their environmental rights and responsibilities.

Aim and objectives:

The aim of this project is to equip young people with the knowledge and the capacity to participate in environmental decision-making processes.

The objectives are:

• To establish the role of environmental youth organisations in fostering youth participation.
• To broaden the understanding of environmental decision-making processes among youth workers and youth.
• To provide youth organisations with tools and methods for engaging young people and promoting active citizenship.
• To empower and support young people to take part in climate change-related decision-making.

Description of activities:

The first training course “Youth exploring participation”, 17-23 March 2018, Kapraluv Mlyn, Czech Republic. During the training course we will explore what participation means, which levels of participation there are, good examples of participation, how organisations can influence the involvement of young people. During the project we will find out what is the stake of young people in decision-making and the competences of organisations and youth workers on engaging and inspiring young people to become active citizens.
The second training course “Youth for environmental future”, 8-15 July 2018, ecological center Slunakov, Czech Republic. It will focus on environmental decision-making and the role of youth in it: international frameworks, role of countries, involvement of citizens in accepting and following international agreements, decision-making on different levels: international and local. Another focus will be developing competences of youth workers and organisations to promote young people’s engagement in environmental decision-making.

The international campaign “Take a green stand“, April-December 2018. It will focus on using the knowledge and skills from both training courses on promoting youth participation in climate change-related decision-making: selected partners will organise local workshops (with financial support) on various international frameworks, their development and implementation: for example, the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals. We will also support the process with a webpage on YEE website which will include articles, videos, materials with examples of young people getting engaged in their communities.

Partners:

• Young Researchers of Serbia
• AYA (Russia)
• SYC (Armenia)