Our project “Eco-campaign – Be the Change!” involves 5 partners from Portugal, Ireland, Romania and Turkey, facilitating the Mobility of 102 youth workers and youth learners, among which at least 26 with fewer opportunities, in the frame of 5 Mobility sessions. Each mobility session deals with an issue of climate change or environmental protection (water protection, waste, biocide, nature activities, protection of biodiversity and natural parks), revealing their global connectedness and the local opportunities for youth participation and youth action. The objectives to be achieved are: - To exchange, develop and perfect non-formal educational tools for youth empowerment and civic participation (including disadvantaged youth) for environmental protection and facing climate change; - To develop campaigning for environmental protection as an educational method that may be applied within our organizations and used by others in Youth educational programs; - Give visibility to the recognition tools (Youthpass, Europass skills passport) and disseminate their use among partner organizations and their action/ exchange network; - Consolidate partner relations and build bridges for sharing learning experiences and develop common ground to work in the future. Thus, our project responds to the needs of the participants (youth workers and youth learners) as well as to the needs of our organizations: - for youth workers: the need to increase knowledge and skills in environmental related subjects; to raise awareness of global and local climate change effects; to learn how to think "out-of-the-box" in different geographic and social contexts; to exchange and collectively acquire the know-how to perfect campaigning as a youth participation and youth education method; - for our organizations: we need cross-border knowledge sharing, collaborative work on campaigning with youth, raising European environmental awareness (of problems, but also resources) and networking for long-term partnerships to consolidate our work programs with youth; - for youth: need for empowerment and stimulated potential to become active in environmental and climate action, solving the adults’ problems and even teaching the adults; increased awareness about EU citizenship and learn about the larger ecosystems there are part of (Europe); increased interest in pursuing with youth learning activities under EU frame after the end of the project. In order to respond to these needs, achieve the objectives and produce a positive impact upon all participants and organizations involved, the following activities will be organized, from October 2014 to September 2016: 1. Continuously - researching existing good practices of non-formal educational methods for youth participation (campaigns and campaigning methods, visual communication, humour, guided tours, connections between different social groups etc.); - compiling them in “good practice files” and exchanging them among our organizations; 2. Organizing the 5 Mobility sessions - seminars for youth workers in Ireland, Turkey, Portugal and youth exchanges in Romania and Turkey (in a further location); - during Mobility sessions, the participants will learn and exchange knowledge on campaigning methods with youth, develop together ideas for campaigning, as non-formal learning for and with young people; start these campaigns with local young people, to see how it works. 3. After the meetings, the host organization will continue the campaigns started together, to see how they work locally. 4. Creating an educational TOOLBOX - for young learners who want to campaign in the future and for youth workers who want to support them; - it will include all the methods and educational instruments that will be exchanged and experimented during the project meetings (ice breakers, brainstorms, learning-by observing, learning-by-doing, group work, group presentation, storytelling/living library, field diary, graphic and visual communication, visual illustration, campaigning as a non formal education method, direct contact experience, study visit, training and workshops, interviews, life stories, celebrations). 5. Making the TOOLBOX available to other NGOs, volunteers and schools - creating an online platform with the open source TOOLBOX (website, Facebook, video and image sharing platforms); - sharing it in diverse groups of activists, educators, youth workers and youngsters; - managing an online forum to explain the toolbox to potential users (through the web). 6. Eco Campaign dissemination events - 1 after each project meeting/ Mobility, in each local community of the partners; 1 at the end of the project, organized in each local community of the partners; - these events and the website will set the base for starting an international network for eco-campaigning with youth (continuing and multiplying the project results).