Circular Economy Hot Spots

We applied for this project to address environmental sustainability and youth employability through the green and circular economy. This model offers innovative environmental solutions while providing new job opportunities for young people. The urgent need for climate action, increasing waste generation, and high youth unemployment rates prompted our involvement. We addressed the needs of participating organizations, such as Ride In 971, LEAD and EDUACTIVE, which aimed to shift focus towards circular economy interventions and community participation. We also addressed the needs of target groups like young people in Italy, N.Macedonia and Guadeloupe, who faced challenges related to pollution, waste management, and unemployment. The project's objective was to contribute to sustainable practices using the green and circular economy model by creating educational curriculum, training 30 young people in entrepreneurial skills, and implementing by young people 6 green entrepreneurial objectives (GEO) action plans in the three countries. This aligns with the European Green Deal and Agenda 2030, promoting a cleaner, competitive Europe with sustainable development and innovative job opportunities for young people.

We wanted to achieve the following objectives: - Developed curriculum program with set of activities, methods, instructions and methods for implementation in 4 languages (English, French, Italian, Macedonian); - Developed and implemented 6 Green Entrepreneurial Objectives by 30 young people in 3 countries; - 6 local communities benefited from the Green Entrepreneurial Objectives; - The Circular Economy Objectives-CEO program was offered to other realities working with young people (youth centers, high schools, associations, NGOs, incubation centers targeting youngsters, employment centers et simila);as an extra-curricular educational program for environment and entrepreneurial education; - 4 of Green Entrepreneurial objectives identified by the young people, continue to be implemented by the young people in their local communities and are to be submitted as a solidarity project; - All three organisations have included the topic of Circular economy in their own three year program planning.

The project activities that were implemented are as following: 1. Inception Virtual Transnational Meeting in March 2022 (screen in attach); 2. Elaboration and Publication of Educational Curricula for Extra-Circular Economy Education - "Circular Economy Objectives" (CEO) in April 2022, but updated throughout the entire project duration, as per feedback and evaluation; 3. Learning Teaching Activities on Circular Economy Concept: identifying critical CE spots and defining areas of intervention in May 2022; 4. Virtual Midterm Transnational Meeting in August 2022; 5. Learning Teaching Activities on Developing GEO – Green entrepreneurial objectives in September 2022; 6. Learning Teaching Activities on Evaluation of GEO actions and developing sustainable strategies in December 2022; 7. Multiplying events in each country - Dissemination of project results: Let's circulate our economy in January 2023; 8. Final Virtual Evaluation Transnational Meeting in January 2023.

These are the three specific outputs from our project: Output 1: Created and piloted model for circular economy education for educational institutions and non-profit grassroot organizations in four languages (English, French, Italian and Macedonian); Output 2: Trained and equipped 30 young people with entrepreneurial skills in the area of reusing, repairing, and upcycling through during 3 LTT Activities, allowing them to implement their local action plans, also known as green entrepreneurial objectives (GEO); Output 3: Created and implemented 6 green entrepreneurial objectives (GEO) action plans, starting from grassroots needs which were implemented on local level in three countries: Italy, France (Guadeloupe) and North Macedonia. It is to be specified that Guadeloupe had three action plans, making it a total of 7 between the three countries. These outputs were directly linked with priorities of the programs, because we created a pilot non-formal educational model (output 1), focused on entrepreneurial skills that at the same time promoted youth employment, but also is focused on green and circular economy. It is to be noted that 4 of the 7 GEO are still active and are soon to be presented as European corps solidarity projects in the respective national agencies.