ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

The project “ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE ACCEPTED” took place from June 1, 2016 to November 30, 2017 in five countries – Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Portugal. The aim of the project was to explore innovative approaches for development of youth active citizenship by fostering youth ability to convince stakeholders of the need to implement their proposed solutions for environmental protection. As a result, four groups of young people addressed local environmental problems cooperating with local stakeholders. Based on real problem solving approach, the best ways to improve the quality of civic participation of young people were sought. Meanwhile an international youth contest was organized, which brought together examples of good practice on how young Europeans have come up with concrete solutions to solve local environmental problems. During the project 3 international meetings were held in order to discuss the progress of the project and to exchange examples of good practice in the field of youth civic participation. Diverse combination of partners was established – it included two youth environmental organizations and two classical national-level environmental organizations. Additionally, the fifth partner was international level youth environmental organization. The project provided an opportunity to compare and to exchange good practices in order to improve the work of each organization. The project had a significant positive impact on 27 directly involved young people. Young people in practice had to go through a full cycle of civic participation, starting with problem identification, defending the need for problem solving to other stakeholders, attracting the relevant resources, implementing activities and delivering results to partners, as well as reporting on the results achieved. Such practical work based on real not theoretical problems allows young people to acquire skills necessary for real life - to take the initiative themselves and to be responsible for results of their work. Within the project, group of experts developed video guide for European youth environmental organizations in order to present achieved results in an attractive, engaging and innovative way to their target groups - donors, municipalities, state institutions.