European Volunteers for the Environment
Making European volunteering an opportunity to learn about the environment.
Project period: january 2022-july 2024
Target group: KA2 Youth
Coordinator: Pistes Solidaires (France)
Partners of the project: Replay Network Italy), Solidarity Tracks (Greece), Hub Nicosia (Cyprus)
Website: see the website
The context:
The Green Deal, the ambitious action plan launched by the European Union in December 2019, aims to fight climate change and protect the environment, thus making Europe the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050. This will be done by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting energy efficiency, increasing renewable energy production, and encouraging the transition to a circular economy.
There is growing evidence that human activities have a negative impact on the environment, with adverse consequences for the climate, biodiversity, and quality of life of populations. Scientists and environmental activists have long warned of the urgency of the situation, and today, citizens, and their daily lives, are at the heart of this transition to a climate-neutral society: how we produce and consume, how we heat or cool our homes, how we move, how we eat, how we work, and ultimately, how we live together.
To achieve the Green Deal goal, we must all act together. Environmental awareness among young people is increasingly visible and growing. Young people are aware of how much power they have to make a difference, and they are looking for more comprehensive solutions to combat climate change and environmental destruction. Youth are calling for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote the use of renewable energy, fight plastic pollution and protect biodiversity.
However, they can sometimes be overwhelmed by all the information available to them and find themselves powerless to deal with the urgency of the situation. It is necessary to accompany our youth towards this transition in order to provide them with reliable and adapted sources of information.
The European volunteering sector is a constantly growing sector conducive to environmental education. Young people want to act, and learn how to act for their future.
The objectives:
European Volunteers for the Environment (EVE) is a project that puts young people at the heart of their environmental learning.
The main objective is to respond to the needs of young people in terms of understanding, learning, and taking action against global warming.
To this end, it is necessary to analyse the situation in order to take stock of the current involvement of European environmental volunteering. And since learning does not come by itself, we also need to provide the necessary resources to those supervising the volunteers (tutors and youth workers) through various training courses in order to strengthen their knowledge of the Green Deal and the concept of environmental competence.
In order to make our action sustainable, it is necessary to value and encourage our public to act by making innovative initiatives visible. We must engage youth and organizations to make tomorrow a greener future.
The results:
The project will develop the following tools:
- A policy and opportunity report on “Environmental and climate change education in youth work and European volunteering”.
- Creative and innovative learning modules for volunteers and youth workers. In total, this will be 100 modules covering 8 major themes inspired by the Green Deal. These modules consist of learning boxes including a video to discover the theme, a detailed sheet to understand the subject and a challenge to take action.
- Two training curricula for volunteer tutors and youth workers to equip them with the necessary environmental skills to understand why and how we can act at our level.
- A mapping of engagement opportunities in order to share good practices and opportunities that exist within European volunteering programmes.
- A collective day of action for the environment – 5 June, World Environment Day. Mobilize young people to participate for the environment on a specific date and value the actions undertaken!