Youth4EmblematicMountains Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth4EmblematicMountains

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

What could be the role of education in the valorization and preservation of our cultural and natural heritage and the awareness concerning Climate change? How can young people actively contribute to the green transition of our territories? How can they represent their territory and become the “ambassadors” of their diversity, at the local level but also at the European one?

An effective green transition requires the involvement of a diversity of stakeholders: local public authorities, NGOs, citizens…but we shouldn’t forget the young generation. Raising awareness on climate change and the environment (both natural and cultural heritage) among young people is essential to build the world of tomorrow. Young people of our areas are tomorrow’s key-players! Meanwhile, they spent most of their week time in class, studying, learning and discovering…with the help of their teachers. Thus, the class could be the perfect learning environment to raise awareness on natural and cultural environment and climate change challenges. These topics do not have to be studied as a new academic discipline but could and should be addressed through classic topics: history, geography, biology, sciences, mathematics…

Moreover, learning through concrete and local examples is often the best way to reach young people. Our aim is to start from our respective local framework (young people living areas) before building bridges between our European territories facing common challenges: how to protect and highlight our natural and cultural heritage? How to encourage our young people to remain in our areas? How to raise awareness on environmental issues? How to mobilize our citizens and notably the young generation on the climate change issues? How to encourage them to be proactive nowadays and in the future, by choosing green careers?

These are the challenges raised by our partnership, composed of six organizations from France, Italy, Spain and Greece. Our main objectives for this project are the following:
– To raise awareness of young people to make them aware of the natural and cultural diversity of their environment;
– To help young people to become drivers of change to better protect their environment and territory nowadays and in the future;
– To enable them to be “ambassadors” of their territory to represent it both locally and at the European scale, being able to present their area, its environment, history, biodiversity, natural and cultural heritage… and being able to explain and convince of the necessity to protect.

We will fulfill our objectives via the co-building of three Intellectual Outputs. The first one, the baseline study, will help us to analyse the existing pedagogical tools and methodologies aiming to raise awareness among young people on natural and cultural heritage protection, both at the partners’ scale and at the European level. The aim is also to benefit from the experience of other organizations, in different European countries, inside and outside our partnership. The second one, the Pedagogical Guide, will consist in a methodology aiming to assist teachers/training staff in developing raising awareness activities related to natural and cultural heritage in class. The third one, the Multi Modules Toolkit, aims to develop and provide teachers/training staff with practical tools, learning materials, teaching materials … to work on one or more subjects related to the territory and its environment, natural and cultural heritage… in class.

We also aim to develop a long-term new cooperation between teachers and professionals from the academic and educational world, professionals from various sciences (biology, botany, geography, history, culture, …) AND managers of the natural and cultural resources of our respective areas (local authorities), to detect the needs of educational tools and materials.These two “worlds” are not used to work together although it seems essential to increase the awareness of young people about cultural and environmental resources and to prepare them to be the future key-players of the green transition.

This ERASMUS+ project is built on an existing network: the Emblematic Mediterranean network, made-up of mountainous areas represented by local authorities and by education organisations. If we have already developped cooperation projects together, this new project is then an opportunity to reinforce the link between the world of local authorities acting on environmental and cultural issues AND the world of schools/educational organisations. This project is a new step to strengthen this European cooperation. The following step could even be to develop youth exchanges (via a new ERASMUS+ project) in the future, enabling our young people to discover, exchange and represent each other natural and cultural diversity. The cooperation between Schools/training organisations and local authorities from our mountainous territories is then just a beginning, hopefully!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 181870 Eur

Project Coordinator

Syndicat mixte Canigó Grand Site & Country: FR

Project Partners

• EUREKA 21
• AGENCIA DE DESENVOLUPAMENT DEL BERGUEDA CONSORCI
• Estudis d’Hoteleria i Turisme CETT S.A.
• ΠΙΕΡΙΚΗ ΑΝΑΠΤΥΞΙΑΚΗ Α.Ε.-Ο.Τ.Α.
• Il Bosso Formazione Soc Coop