"ReNew2020 - Youth training course for creative waste recycling"

The promotion and support of youth auto-entrepreneurship in the Green Economy sector were the main project priorities, achieved through the creation of a strategic partnership entirely dedicated to the development of an educational path based on innovative and highly qualitative skill-training techniques. These expected outcomes have been carried out as an efficient and useful instrument to face youth unemployment crisis, and to stimulate the younger generation to create new form of entrepreneurship fostering their creativity and their theoretical and personal competences. The project methodology focused on the development of a skill-training path dedicated to European youth to enhance specific and professional expertise in the Green Economy and Up-cycling sector, creating a strategic partnership between European organizations (profit and non-profit) with specific expertise in the field of youth training, auto-entrepreneurship, design creativity and waste management. In particular, Renew2020 project involved 6 organizations: Consorzio Provinciale Intesa - CCA (the coordinator) and Contarina from Italy, AIDIMME from Spain, Socijalna Zadruga Humana Nova Cakovec from Croatia, Superuse Studios from the Netherlands and Rreuse from Belgium. Partners have shared their skills and experiences in order to develop a training course aimed at young people (aged 18-29 years), new graduates, unemployed, precarious employers, youth with social difficulties or from disadvantaged backgrounds. The training path has been developed through on-line lessons based on an e-learning platform and through 4 mobility periods across Europe (Italy, Croatia, Netherlands and Spain). It has involved 30 direct participants (5 per each partner organization), who took part in lessons, group workshops, visits and cooperative learning exercises about the topic of auto-entrepreneurship in the Green Economy, strengthening their professional competences, skills, knowledge in this sector. On the other hand, indirect participants have been (and will be) hundreds and more, considering that all the educational material was (and is still) open on line; it is still accessible to everyone interested in the topics and it has been vastly disseminated through specific dissemination techniques. Innovative ICT tools, non-formal educational activities and cooperative learning techniques encouraged participants to acquire knowledge and auto-entrepreneurial skills, such as: marketing basics, implementation of commerce planning, web marketing, business model and business plan, leadership and team management, design management, software and product design. The educational path has trained the youth participants to compete in an increasingly competitive international market, improving the Re-use product value by generating aesthetic and practical innovations, adopting the possibilities offered by the latest technology and acquiring professional competences linked to the production technologies and design techniques applied in the Up-cycling sector. The course has succeeded in training young professionals, who can now combine creative skills with solid technical expertise, and it has provided participants with the ability to face a product development process from concept to production.