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Youth Work in Ecovillages
Start date: Jun 1, 2016, End date: Oct 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

This mobility of youth workers project has a consortium of 10 partner organisations from 10 different programme countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and UK.The partners work in the field of education for sustainable development and are all part of the ecovillage movement. An ecovillage is an intentional or traditional community that is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate social and natural environments. The four dimensions of sustainability (ecology, economy, the social and the cultural) are all integrated into a holistic approach.Nowadays there is a strong interest among young people in sustainability issues in general and specifically in ecovillages and their holistic approach to a sustainable lifestyle. Many young people are asking for ways to visit ecovillages and learn more.Most of the project partners have been working mostly in the adult education sector until now, with a limited amount of activity in the area of youth work - even the youth is represented in most ecovillages as a group. They this want to respond to the great demand perceived in young people and intensify their work in the youth sector, including international collaboration projects.Therefore, the following objectives have been chosen for this project:- INCREASE YOUTH WORK IN ECOVILLAGES, enabling ecovillages to reach out to larger numbers of young people- INTERNATIONALISATION, increasing the international cooperation between ecovillages as centres for sustainability education in the field of youth workThis is to be achieved through a networking meeting of 32 youth workers associated with the respective partner organisations. The meeting will take place in Denmark, August 23-28, 2016. The youth workers attending are experts in the field of education for sustainable development and working in ecovillages or bringing the ecovillage concept to other settings. Partly, they are young people with a background in sustainability and keen on working with youth projects. This way, the voice of youth will be represented to bring in young fresh energy. Among the selection criteria is their motivation to start new international collaboration projects.The themes of the meeting can be divided into two main strands:- sharing of best practice- creating new innovative projects & partner findingThe participants will share best practice examples of the youth work in ecovillages they conduct locally in order to inspire the work of each other and promote international innovation transfer. After identifying topics of common interest and brainstorming on ideas for potential future projects, the most promising project ideas are selected. Working groups are formed around these themes who will elaborate a project draft and a project development plan with concrete next action steps.To support the interactive nature of this networking meeting, presentations of the participants are integrated with participative working methods that engage all participants in discussions and collaboration. Methods like World Café will support the process of brainstorming and identifying objectives and themes for future projects. The working groups are organised in the Open Space style where all participants can invite to a group. Groups can stop or start at any time, they can merge or split and participants are free to change between groups. Only two themes are pre-decided: - A qualified response to the refugee situation, in the field of youth. - Adaption of the Ecovillage Design Education curriculum to a youth target group. During the follow-up phase after the networking meeting, the working groups continue to implement the project development plan leading to several new funding applications.The output of this project are the future international youth projects initiated, therefore this project has a clear longer term benefit. In the short term, another benefit is the exchange of best practice between the partners, enabling all participants to draw inspiration for their own work at home, thereby qualifying existing and future efforts. The future projects will show the desired impact on the target group of young people, allowing more youth to engage in projects in ecovillages promoting sustainable lifestyles. The project will lead to an increased cooperation and exchange between the partners and possibly other organisations who will get involved in the future projects, including from European countries not represented in this project.It is time that the ecovillage movement take their youth work seriously and this networking meeting is only the first step to spark a new development. We as partners hope this will be happening.
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