ActiveYouth4Life in action
ActiveYouth4Life is a project with the main target to enhance youths’ civic participation and their sustainable and environmental awareness. What does this mean in practice? It means that it aims to shape active citizens who fight effectively to tackle climate change issues that nowadays are being more and more observed even at the local level.
It is an undeniable fact that strengthening young people's sense of initiative and cooperation towards the confrontation of environmental problems is the stepping stone to make the change towards the urgent issue of climate crisis. For this reason, ActiveYouth4Life project is already contributing to this change through all the steps that have been taken so far within our consortium.
What has been done up to now?
During last months, we developed a Training Handbook for raising youths’ awareness on environmental issues and sustainability through film-making. Useful tools, material and creative ways to address these issues, are all included in the Handbook, so as to equip youth workers with a simple methodology on film-making, without having to be specialists on the field. At the same time, through the implementation of the Handbook, specific LIFEComp competences such as communication, collaboration, flexibility, well-being and empathy are being enhanced to the youth.
We had the chance to test the effectiveness of the Handbook in each country by involving young people in the procedure of the piloting implementation. Under the guidance of a trainer, and following the steps that are being described in the Handbook, the participants cooperated and exchanged ideas with the ultimate goal to create a short film about environmental awareness. During this procedure, young people had the opportunity to develop their personal competences and become more sensitive on the issues of climate change and more motivated to take initiatives for the environmental protection. Furthermore, by using the proposed materials and the ideas of the Training Handbook and working as a team, they managed to create a space of dialogue, inspiration and collaboration, within which the final product were the short films that displayed how climate change has its effects even on a local level and how we can tackle these problems by making small, but important changes in our daily lives.
What is the next step?
Living in a digital and fast- changing era, young people need stimulating and challenging environments of learning. For this reason, our next step is to develop digital escape rooms aiming to foster active citizenship to youths. Creating a more visually attractive and interactive learning environment, can motivate young people to engage and cooperate for fighting for better societies. Lastly, by solving quizzes and riddles to escape a room, young people can develop crucial skills such as critical thinking skills and digital skills to further support them and encourage them to be connected and empowered to take initiatives and thrive as active citizens in the society of today.
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