GreenerAge - CLIMATE-CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY FOR URBAN CITIZENS 55+

Demographic change is a reality in Europe; the share of people aged 55 years or older (55+) is projected to reach 40.6% by 2050. At the same time, environment and climate change are key priorities globally. Thus, the EU is committed to a green transition towards a carbon neutral society by 2050 that must also be inclusive and just. To achieve this, a fundamental cultural shift and education to promote durable changes in citizens’ behaviours towards more sustainable and healthier habits is needed. While youngsters may be the most well positioned to create such transformation due to the extended adoption of internet and social media, adults 55+ are harder to reach as they tend to have less internet access and fewer digital skills, knowledge and confidence. Yet, many older adults are open to learn more and change their behaviour towards more environment-friendly patterns, and given that older adults make up a large proportion of the EU population their participation in sustainable behaviours is crucial to achieve a green transition. The GreenerAge project aimed to tackle climate change literacy and environmental training and awareness while also increasing digital literacy skills and confidence through a gamified digital platform.

GreenerAge aimed for significant contributions to the Green Deal call to “Use research and innovation to kick-start the environmental, social and economic transformations required to tackle the climate challenge”. However, we cannot achieve a green transition when excluding adults 55+ given that they constitute over one third of the European population and may be the hardest to reach. Thus, GreenerAge's overall objectives were: (1) Increasing environmental skills of citizens 55+ through informal gamified learning strategies and tools, co-developing a compendium of knowledge and practices that promote changing behaviour and values necessary to achieve a carbon-neutral society. (2) Broadening access to knowledge and user-friendly tools to create a step-change in environmental literacy via the usage of a new inclusive digital gamification platform. (3) Increasing capacity of adult educators to provide low-threshold and highly adaptable training of environmentally-friendly practices through an inclusive gamified training toolkit adjustable to online, face to face and blended training. (4) Promoting future sustainability and uptake of GreenerAge content by developing a set of recommendations for policymakers and relevant organisations

Greenerage employed the principles of co-creation and co-production as a way of working whereby citizens, relevant stakeholders, and decision makers jointly contributed to create and test a new inclusive digital gamification platform, low-threshold and adaptable trainer manual, and policy recommendations, including: (1) systematic desk research on the existing knowledge, platforms, tools, and best practices on environmental literacy and behaviour change, as well as features, formats, challenges, and lessons learned from previous initiatives, guiding the developed content. (2) workshops and narrative interviews with older adults 55+ to understand their needs related to environmental and climate literacy, knowledge and level of digital skills, and preferred digital platforms. (3) testing of platform content (incl. compendium, trainer manual and policy recommendations) with older adults 55+ and relative during workshops. (4) policymaker interviews to understand local needs, challenges and barriers to further develop policy recommendations. (5) five multiplier events at the end of the project involving citizens, trainers, policymakers, relevant organistaions, etc. to raise awareness about the GreenerAge platform.

GreenerAge concrete outputs were: (1) Environmental and climate literacy compendium covering the overarching topic of climate literacy and five key areas of sustainable living, along with concrete tips (as an individual and as part of the community), websites, and mobile apps, on how to implement this knowledge of sustainability into their everyday life. (2) Trainer Manual on workshop methodology, curriculum on how to implement the five key areas of sustainable living along with individual and community actions, how to use digital tools in adult education, and a toolkit with material for facilitators and learners and different validation and certification options. (3) Older adults 55+ and stakeholder feedback and perspectives in format of short video perspectives and stories. (4) Policy recommendations booklet to make stakeholders rethink their approaches and policies for climate change, with a special aim towards the role and potential actions of citizens 55+. (5) Open-access inclusive digital gamification learning platform to enhance digital and environmental literacy. (6) GreenerAge main outputs are available in six different languages (English, Finnish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, and Polish).