Green Environmental Climate Care Orientation

Awareness for environmental topics such as the consequences of progressing climate change, pollution and waste separation are of utmost importance for young people. Nevertheless, many adolescents lack the understanding of how they can use the environment in an ecologically sustainable way in their leisure time (e.g. for sports) on the one hand and contribute to reducing their ecological footprint and proactively taking actions and measures against climate change on the other hand. In order to find solutions against climate change, a joint effort between several countries across the European Union is necessary. The GECCO project thus enhanced the thought of intercultural collaboration in order to take action against climate change through the commitment of young people from socially disadvantaged communities. Both, the participating young people as well as the project partner organizations benefit from learning different practices from each other.

In the GECCO small scale project, the two youth organizations ÖJAB and Jongerenwerk Barkema & de Haan have focused on the following objectives: OVERALL OBJECTIVE: Encouraging young people from socially disadvantaged communities to shape their local natural environment and contribute to take action against climate change through a collaborative, cross-border effort SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES: ● for young people to acquire knowledge and skills that they need to protect their local environment and take actions against climate change in their communities ● for young people to develop self and group effectiveness, intercultural and language learning ● to enhance capacity building among trainers and educators who want to work with young people within the context of nonformal environmental education measures

In addition to the project management & dissemination package, the implemented activities focused on 4 content-related work packages: Based on the experiences of the project partners, methodological examples and content considerations for a summer camp with socially disadvantaged young people were compiled. These served as the basis for the core content of the project, the implementation of a Green Summer Camp with young people from Austria and the Netherlands. The 1-week camp took place in Passail, Styria in Austria in September 2022. Finally, in order to emphasize the multiplier effects of the project, a manual in three languages was written, in which best practice methods and experiences from the project were compiled. In a total of 6 train-the-trainer workshops, the experiences were passed on to other teachers, trainers and educators.

One of the concrete results of the GECCO project was the implementation of a Summer Camp for 20 young people (12 from Austria, 8 from the Netherlands). The most valuable result for the secondary target group of teachers, trainers and educators is the 40-page manual, which provides perfect guidance for teachers, trainers and educators who want to implement similar projects with groups of young people. Another result is that the exchange of best practices between the two youth organisations ÖJAB and Jongerenwerk was very fruitful. In addition, the project was enriched by the support of the Bildungswerkstatt Wald e.V.