GreenCool - Let me influence your green self! - Skill development in the encouragement of mindset towards environmental awareness and sustainable development in the alliance of ECoC

Our aim was to challenge youth communication influencing power for a greater good for society. Youth have their voice and online it was listened to. They have the power to influence anyway, so why not in a green way. Up till now most of the European projects (by filtering the Erasmus Research Platform) lacked the relevance of reversed dialogue and learning curve. This means the policy makers, teachers, lecturers and trainers investigating the needs and skills of youth and developed materials to teach them. This project aimed to target the niche of the reverse attitude, namely what educators, policy makers can learn from young influencers and how young influencing communication methods can be transferred from the online world to the offline platform and thought to university students. Throughout the project we worked with these influencers. With this project we wanted to develop competences and topics that are vital today and teach others with a snowball method how to influence the society with green ideas (sustainable festival, art, consumption).

The general goal of the project was to develop environmental awareness among university students and to spread the thought of sustainable development among the widest possible age groups at events that attract large audience. There was an aim hierarchy, which meant partners regarded the GreenCool project as the next jigsaw in their strategic framework to reach continuality in the field of university students' skill development. Therefore we committed to develop an innovative online course material and to mainstream sustainable development in all curricula for higher education students. Recognizing the convincing power of young influencers, the project aim was to reach out to all age groups of audience at cultural events and festivals in the various European Capitals of Culture to encourage environmentally conscious activity and to be active members and beneficiaries of sustainable development. Furthermore our goal was to equip students with communication tools and sustainable attitude to become effective advocates for advancing EU green economy and culture.

The main result reached our aim, namely: raising awareness of sustainability, green issues among the youth; enhancement of deep knowledge and understanding of sustainability among the involved target groups’ (among them HEI students). There concrete outputs included the establishment of learning material (MOOC) that was made available for a wide range of potential audience. Increased cooperation of HEIs with their environment. Integrating technological development into knowledge transfer linked to sustainability, green practices. The expected outcome of the project was to inspire mainly university students to become Greenfluencer ambassadors in all aspect of green let it be environment, culture, literature, food and drink, way of life etc. The other expected outcome was when youth, expert in green topics and communication by developing a MOOC material would have different views which creates a more interactive course cooperation community. These results were successful in all partners’ universities. Furthermore the national and international ECoC events gave tremendous opportunity to these youth to make their voice heard offline on green topics through diverse influencing techniques. The following intellectual outputs were reached: PR1: - GREENFLUENCE PRACTICES COLLECTION AND RESEARCH: methodological framework for implementation by exploring influencer tools and techniques and communication channels through youth can be approached in the 21st century PR2: MASSIVE ONLINE OPEN COURSE (MOOC), Course curriculum-design and development of material in two platforms. An international, summer camp and workshop with lecturers, experts, students and influencers to develop the training material (A1 GreenCool Summer Workshop) in June 2023 in Veszprém and at Lake Balaton (Hungary). PR3: BLENDED ECOC GREENFLUENCER PILOT COURSE ON NATIONAL LEVEL at all partner universities at national level (based on the MOOC material, national level and language). The outcome of the course was a participation in an ECoC event/festival in November-December 2023, where students could try and test their knowledge and influence audience offline (E1-4 in all ECoC cities). PR4: BLENDED ECOC GREENFLUENCER INTERNATIONAL COURSE at all partner universities at international level. The best 4 students (the best presenters based on course requirements) and 2 lecturers from each university were present at the final Greencool ECoC event in Tartu, June 2024: International GreenCool MeetUp (A2). PROFESSIONAL CONTENT AND GUIDELINES for international online workshop for stakeholders were provided to give suggestions how to integrate these techniques into subjects from any disciplines in order to provide the knowledge for any universities. In 2024 September we organized an online workshop where the results and experiences were shared with stakeholders and advice were provided how to use the open platform or integrate activities.