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Social Multipliers for Sustainability
Social Multipliers for Sustainability
Start date: Feb 1, 2015,
End date: Oct 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
SMS is a project created for dedicated youth workers concerned about all aspects of sustainability - economic, social and environmental. It is conceived to train, prepare and empower youth workers into becoming SOCIAL MULTIPLIERS for SUSTAINABILITY, able to deal with global-local ("glocal") environmental challenges, skilled to understand concepts/scientific data/global models and to transfer them to their young learners, especially those facing difficulties.
It is also conceived to develop, test, improve, combine new educational games and non-formal learning tools, benefiting youth workers, young learners, local communities and the entire European society (now in need of new choices and changes towards a more involved, inclusive and sustainable way of living). The "Green Dictionary" will represent such a tool, motivating educators and learners in a inclusive way, reaching those who need it more and preparing them to a new state of mind, to activate their participation. Like a SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE on mobile phone, the SMS "Green Dictionary" can be used as lexicon inventory for SMART MESSAGES for SUSTAINABILITY, used in different national languages (written and audio, accessible to both people with hearing and visual disabilities).
SMS involves 5 partners from Turkey (2), Ireland, Romania and Portugal, facilitating the Mobility of 76 youth workers, 24 with fewer opportunities (30%), in the frame of 4 Mobility meetings. Turkish Coordination is perfect to create a bridge between East and West; due to the Turkish partners' wide networks, it also guarantees a vast dissemination for the Green Dictionary, for the project results and for its messages of solidarity, inclusion, environmental awareness and action.
The objectives to be achieved are:
-to bridge the gap between expert knowledge on the environment, climate change, sustainability, on one hand, and youth knowledge, on the other hand, in order to empower disadvantaged youth to become active in sustainability issues; to enhance the potential of youth workers to bridge this gap (to become multipliers);
-to increase quality of educators' youth work, increase ability to involve/empower disadvantaged youth, in the domain of challenging climate change;
-to increase youth participation in environmental protection and facing climate change (sustainability); especially considering disadvantaged youth and, in these groups, especially considering young women (who face additional difficulties and exclusion, due to gender inequality);
-to develop our NGOs towards more suitable educational methods and youth-work capacity; to reinforce our European connection and collaboration - with other youth workers, with sustainability experts, with young researchers, with youth learners;
- to develop more inclusive approaches to improve young people self-esteem and personal fulfillment, and so to contribute to social cohesion and active citizenship.
During 21 months, from February 2015 to October 2016, the activity plan complies youth work training, debates, field visits, Green Dictionary editing and testing, gamification experiences and young people engagement towards our goals:
- Youth Worker mobilities in Turkey, Antalya (focused on basic concepts of sustainability and their links to our everyday life), Portugal, Cadaval (focused on the concept of resilience and building collaborations with young academics), Ireland, Sligo (focused on the concept of self-sustainability and building collaborations with engineers and social engineers of eco-villages), Turkey, (focused on sharing the Green Dictionary and disseminating it widely, from local communities, to the European level);
- Local work to develop, adapt, improve, test our educational tools "translating" expert knowledge into non-formal learning accessible to disadvantaged youth;
- Dissemination activities, reaching info-sharing networks with more than 50.000 online participants (mostly educators, youth and activists); reaching more than 1200 educational institutions; including and guiding at least 500 online users of the Green Dictionary, 250 local multipliers (youth and youth workers), 200 participants at the first festival celebrating the launch of the Green Dictionary, mostly from disadvantaged groups.