Biodiversity and Climate Change Community Champions

BCCCC (Climate Champions) addresses a key need for adult education via communities for climate change & biodiversity skills. It provides education, inspiration & pathways for meaningful change in European communities. Our partners experienced that, unlike younger generations, many adults didn’t grow up with heightened environmental awareness & climate activism education that youth are exposed to. Our needs showed that due to the sheer size & scale of the climate crisis & challenges, they often feel powerless to know how to even start to tackle it. Many live in locations without specialist education access & are part of minority communities. Needs arose for a whole of community, inclusive approach whereby adults are educated as community champions & from slow progress in contributing to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development & the SDGS’s. The resources empower adults & educators to understand & access climate & biodiversity education providing a new field of socially inclusive, transferrable learning. BCCCC training is flexible, which ensured participation & inclusive of all levels of digital skills. It responds to target group needs. User test shows an increase in their civic, personal & interpersonal & digital capacity.

By implementing the Climate Champions project, our main goal was to empower local communities in effectively contributing to climate action and biodiversity conservation. We aimed to create a network of informed and skilled community members who through exposure to best practices and new learning, would then lead and inspire others in sustainable practices and also align with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDGs at community level. We wanted not just to raise awareness, but also foster real change at the grassroots community level.

Multiple activities were successful developed and implemented and are now in the process of being mainstreamed into community and adult education to develop the first generation of Climate Champions. To summarise the activities:- • PR1: COURSE: EMPOWERING BIODIVERSITY & CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS • PR2: COMMUNITIES IN ACTION: COMPENDIUM OF BIODIVERSITY & CLIMATE CHANGE BEST PRACTICES • PR3: THEORY OF CHANGE TOOLKIT for COMMUNITIES - note each PR was user tested. We created and shared the user test methodologies and surveys and complied the results. • 24 people contributed to our Participation Forums • 20 adult learners & 20 adult educators pilot tested all 3 PRs • 16 people from in Ireland, Bulgaria, Greece & Portugal came together in Greece in an immersive learning activity • 5 Education Bodies across each of our participating regions are incorporating Climate Champion resources in their adult education offering • Planning and hosting Multiplier Events in our partner countries with 307 attendees. • Project Management activities included TPMs (Roscommon, Sofia, Leitrim and Thessaloniki), a robust project management process including for Quality Management, Impact Evaluation and Sustainability Planning including 8 Quality Monitoring questionnaires and the results shared in the Q&M and Evaluation Report, set up and running of the participant forums, a high impact dissemination programme including a dedicated project website which has a target of 10,000 unique visitors and actually achieved 29,808 unique visitors.

PR1 consists of a set of open educational resources (6 modules and 1 Educator's Guide) created for teachers, trainers, and local communities, published online, and free to download for self-learning or for use in the classroom, in adult education or in the development of community projects. The OERs, a set of multimedia resources (PowerPoint, documents, worksheets, videos and interactive quizzes etc.), is organised into 6 Modules directly contributing to 6 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 6 Modules cover the following topics:  SDG4 – Quality Education  SDG 13 – Climate Action  SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production  SDG 3 – Health and Wellbeing  SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities  SDG 15 – Life on Earth Available in EN, PT, BG & GR, while our target was 500 adult learners to complete the Climate Champions online self-learning course becoming Climate Champions, to date the course has actively engaged 1,131 learners and downloads which will promote positive change, galvanize others, and create immediate impact. The PR2-COMMUNITIES IN ACTION COMPENDIUM is one of the key results of the project and aims to record and transfer good practices of voluntary local initiatives for climate change and biodiversity throughout Europe. The final output included 32 inspirational case studies from Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, Denmark and Ireland, exceeding the target of 30. It is uploaded on the project website, it was shared at local level and it is also translated in GR, PT and BG. It has been downloaded 3,269 times. PR3 - THEORY OF CHANGE (ToC) TOOLKIT for COMMUNITIES includes a toolkit with three Annexes - ANNEX 1 – Stakeholder Mapping Table; ANNEX 2 – Project Examples and ANNEX 3 -Theory of Change Logical Model. Quality was a priority throughout this project and the 8 quality monitoring questionnaires were answered in a timely manner by all partners. The data reports proved overall satisfaction with the project progress, content and communication. We responded to the ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE GOALS priority and achieved community actionable/educational contributions to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and 6 of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG12, SDG13, SDG11, SDG15, SDG3 & SDG4 We achieved local impact with the following indicators: Target 500 adult learners complete the BCCCC online self-learning course. It has seen active engagement in partner countries with 1,131 learner downloads. The resources were downloaded 3,269 times by target groups. Enabling a further 1,000 Adult Learners, not currently involved in the community, to be motivated to increase their civic, personal, and interpersonal, and digital capacity in respect of biodiversity and climate change. This is currently happening. We setup 4 participant forums in the four participating countries. Pilot test participant target was exceeded with 23 educators and 22 learners. Educators from Ireland, Bulgaria, Greece, and Portugal came together in an immersive learning activity in June 2023, presented further on in this report Multiplier events with 307 attendees.