Community Challengers: Towards sustainable & climate-smart communities through Arts & Social Entrepreneurship Erasmus Project

Project Title

Community Challengers: Towards sustainable & climate-smart communities
through Arts & Social Entrepreneurship

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Environmental awareness, artistic expression, empowerment and entrepreneurship education for young people with fewer opportunities are the objectives of the Community Challengers Model, which is the essence of the project “Community Challengers: towards sustainable and climate-smart communities through arts and social entrepreneurship”.
The choice of climate action in combination with the tools of awareness raising, arts, social entrepreneurship and advocacy is defined by the current global environmental crisis and the call of young people to take urgent measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. Climate emergency has been declared by many governments and communities since 2019 and has been the target of many European and global policies, e.g. European Green Deal, European Youth Strategy, Sustainable Development Goals. However, more awareness raising, more green skills and more collaboration is needed at multiple levels to reverse the damage to the ecosystem.

The Community Challengers project seeks to empower young people with tools to take and reflect on climate action and mobilise their communities with innovative and appealing measures. The project is based on a learning model that combines education, arts and social entrepreneurship, and thus targets both the intellectual and emotional level.
The learning model draws on a 4-step methodology developed for this project: Learn, Analyse, Create, Advocate (LACA learning method). It enables young people to learn about climate change; analyse their community from the point of view of sustainability; create a vision for the future, combined with entrepreneurship tools, and take action. The model is developed by the Consortium of partners from Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Portugal and Serbia who have complementary expertise in the field of environmental education, youth empowerment, arts, advocacy and entrepreneurship. There are expert partners from Belgium and German and implementing partners from Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Portugal and Serbia who would test the model with young people and get their feedback.

The project activities include the development of four Intellectual Outputs which correspond to four steps of the model:
1. Learn – Climate Action Handbook (O1)
2. Analyze – Community Mapping Toolkit (O2)
3. Create – Community Challengers Guide (O3)
4. Advocate – Advocacy Tutorials (O4).

The Outputs will be tested by the partners in a series of local and transnational activities, e.g. local 4-step workshops with young people, blended mobility event of young people, training of trainers, multiplier events). Afterwards, they will be fine-tuned and offered in 6 languages (English, Serbian, Croatian, Latvian, Italian and Portuguese) for free download from the project website. The results will be presented in 7 countries to the audience of 200 European multipliers and disseminated through a network of partners and associate partners inside and outside the European Union to thousands of people.
Other key activities are European-wide peer learning and online exchange of young people, coaching sessions with partners, as well as international partner meetings.
The project’s target group are young people, especially those with fewer opportunities who reside in rural areas and deprived urban districts, and, in three countries, young people with disabilities; as well as youth workers, local stakeholders and policy makers.
All project activities seek to inform and empower young people, as well as bring together other project’s target groups and contribute to the goal of the European Union to become climate-neutral and sustainable continent, which can only be based on education, mobilisation and cooperation.

It is expected that 150 young people learn together, strengthen their self-confidence, increase their sense of initiative and active civic position, set up partnerships with community stakeholders, as well as build their capacities in arts, entrepreneurship and advocacy; 10 youth workers from Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Portugal and Latvia are trained and become Community Challengers professionals with a high skill level for the topic Climate Action; partner organisations become engines of climate action within their community; and 400 community stakeholders and policy makers become involved in the project activities to design and support youth initiatives and climate-smart policies at local, as well as regional and international level.
The project will allow to create a sustainable and empowering environment for young people on the topic climate action and to contribute to their active participation in society and in decision-making processes. In the long run, project outputs and reflections will directly feed the debate on the national and local level about climate change and mechanisms for youth participation, as they will offer guidelines on how to improve work and lifestyles which would lead to more green and sustainable living for all.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 191199 Eur

Project Coordinator

INTERNATIONALE AKADEMIE BERLIN FUR INNOVATIVE PADAGOGIK PSYCHOLOGIE UND OKONOMIE GGMBH (INA) & Country: DE

Project Partners

• “IZGAISMO IDEJU”
• Associazione di Promozione Sociale YEPP Italia
• Supernatural
• DYPALL NETWORK: ASSOCIACAO PARA O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA PARTICIPACAO CIDADA
• Hrvatsko društvo likovnih umjetnika
• OUT OF THE BOX INTERNATIONAL