Simple living-High thinking Erasmus Project

Project Title

Simple living-High thinking

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

“Simple Living-High Thinking” was a Strategic Partnership project involving youth workers and youth from 5 partner organisations from Sweden, Belgium, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republik. All the organisations are active in youth work, connected with areas of self-sustainability, healthy lifestyles and youth employment. The partners expressed their mutual interest in creating a network based on strong partnerships aimed to connect more and exchange the good practices in relevant areas of their work.
The project united youthworkers and youth around the common idea of changing the youth employment paradigm from urban to rural, which empowered youth to act and receive truly useful rewards as part of the work that they are doing.
In addition to addressing challanges of life in the cities and discussing the issues of promoting a simple and healthy lifestyle, at the meeting partners considered the possibilities of how to engage young people in developing organic gardening and to encourage compassion, solidarity, and active attitude towards modern challenges.
During the project participants actively dived into topics and issues of youth volunteering, social entrepreneurship, eco-tourism, self-sustainable farming, healthy living, and EU funding opportunities for future cooperation. Participants shared their knowledge and expertise in the fields and tried to find solutions for youth engagement in their activities.

The project lasted for 24months, starting on May 2015 and ending in April 2017. It involved 3 meetings of youth workers and local youth, in Hungary, Belgium and Sweden. The meetings were based on different combinations of outdoor activities (developing natural permaculture, field trips, yoga), educational trainings (seminars, workshops on transversal skills and innovative methods of youth work), learning opportunities of European instruments/certificates (Youthpass, Europass CV) and practical management education (fundraising for organisations on national and international level, grant writing, Erasmus+ opportunities presentations).
The conclusions of the meetings were:
– in Sweden – preparatory event (main themes: transversal skills development, outreach for youth),
– in Hungary – practical development event (European instruments, outdoor activities),
– in Belgium – summarization of the gained experience (fundraising, entrepreneurship ideas for youth).

Beside advancement of specific competences of our youthworkers which enabled them to do more quality youth work, raise intercultural competence, communication skills, foreign language skills, knowledge about the possibilities for European cooperation, knowledge about youth work in different countries, presentation skills, fund-raising skills, active listening skills etc., we made all our good practices, knowledge and solutions relevant to the topics of the project easy available to youth and to all interested parties through:
1) an attractive inspirational and educational movie (50 minutes) inspired by the main idea of the project: Simple living–high thinking (published in 500 copies and distributed as a dissemination and educational tool for free to various stakeholders and interested parties),
2) educational Manual (hard copy and soft copy uploaded on website) which provides valuable theoretical and practical knowledge in the areas of self-sustainability, entrepreneurship for young people and healthy lifestyle throughout EU and world. The Manual is very practical, giving education on developing organic gardening ,production of environmentally-friendly products and opportunities for distribution of products on business market,
3) an easily approachable Website that contains information on the project’s theme, different articles and educational Manual. It gives theoretical and practical information on how to produce your own organic vegetables, fruits and products made out of them. It teaches interested persons how to put their product on the business market, what are the best ways to enter the market and find customers. It is created in a modern and attractive way. The visitors of the website and readers of the Manual could use this knowledge for their future employment opportunities

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 66120 Eur

Project Coordinator

ISKCON Korsnäs Gård & Country: SE

Project Partners

• DUHOVNO DRUSTVO ZA DUSO
• Öko-völgy Alapítvány az Alkalmazott Fenntarthatóságért
• SANGA-projekt pratelstvi a spoluprace
• Radhadesh ASBL