Project Description

The project aims to actively involve young people, especially the ones with fewer opportunities, in a number of intercultural activities for the promotion of a more sustainable way of life for all. Young people, and especially unemployed youth, migrants, refugees, ex-drug addicts, will take part in the youth committees that will be established in seven partner countries, and will be engaged in the organization of and participation in information campaigns and events, attempting to explore the issues of cultural diversity and sustainable development, starting from their neighbourhoods.

The project will encourage the active participation of young people in public life by establishing youth neighbourhood committees composed by youth with different cultural backgrounds or/and fewer opportunities that will be trained to run campaigns for the sensitisation (of their own neighbourhoods) on global issues and the promotion of a more sustainable consuming and living. The project will directly target 310 young people from Italy, Estonia, Turkey, Slovenia, Latvia and Germany, who will be involved in the following activities:

• Organisation of neighbourhood participatory workshops in each partner country on specific themes that will be selected by the neighbourhood committees and participants themselves, focusing on intercultural dialogue, sustainable living and consuming and youth mobilisation. By bringing together young people of various social and cultural backgrounds, the workshops also aim to connect the participants in order to explore issues such as ethnic identity and cultural diversity. 
• Organisation of an information campaign in each country to promote the active participation of youth at local level, starting from the neighbourhoods, and the inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities in order to sensitize (youth and the wider public) on sustainable development and cultural diversity. The specific theme of each campaign will be chosen by the young participants and communicated on line through the use of social media (blog, facebook, twitter), and it will also be presented at the transnational festival with the active participation of the target groups. 
• Use of social media (blog, facebook) for the communication and exchange of ideas and experiences of young people from the partner and other EU countries.
• Organisation, by the young people, of a transnational festival in Greece, aiming to inform other young people and the wider public in general, on global issues such as climate change, sustainable development, racism and xenophobia. It will include presentation of the sustainable living practices/ideas and the “results” of the events (workshops, contests) implemented in each partner country.

Participants in the youth committees and other young people in EU countries (approx. 15.000) will gain access to information that will provide them with the knowledge to promote the existence of more sensitized and open-minded European citizens and to support change of attitudes in society in order to further promote social inclusion, cohesion, solidarity and tolerance as well as shared awareness and deepened understanding of the individual responsibility for the environment.