Urban Gardens, community spaces, and intergenerational bridges: Green Cities for active youth

EU GREEN encourages young people to develop innovative ideas and creative solutions to community challenges. The meetings around the creation of these gardens will serve as a starting point for these ideas, inspiring young people to start new sustainable projects related to agriculture, KM0 food production and environmental sustainability. The 3rd priority addressed by the project is "Increasing quality, innovation and recognition of youth work", therefore it is intended that the training materials for youth workers are not only and exclusively used in this project, but become recurrent for youth workers to train and improve their competences in a continuous and autonomous way. The development of a participatory model to train them and provide them with strategies and methods that enable them to create these community spaces with their young people is in itself innovative and fosters the recognition of youth work. The implementation of a networking strategy as a tool for knowledge exchange is also a factor of youth innovation that allows a more community-based and participatory approach to social and environmental phenomena. Therefore, the project aims to turn both young people and youth workers into agents of change.

Partners:
- Youth on Board, North Macedonia
- Ballyhoura Development CLG, Ireland
- Fundacja Instytut Re-Integracji Spolecznej, Poland
- Associazi one Ergon a favore dei Sordi, Italy
- Asociacija "Socialinis hubas", Lithuania

Results:
- Creation of resources for youth workers
-Design and development of an educational platform
-Interactive map: a minimum of 30 good practices in total and a minimum of 3 organisations from each country and 3 international organisations contacted by each partner
-Development of training materials for the course for youth workers in all partner languages

Objectives:
- To create shared spaces where young people and older adults can collaborate, share knowledge and build meaningful relationships through the experience of growing an urban garden together.
- To encourage community engagement and social interaction among young people by fostering mutual learning, a sense of belonging, and equal respect for all citizens.
- To promote healthy habits and the well-being of all participants by providing them with a safe environment in which to be in contact with nature and with each other.
- Educate participants about the benefits of sustainable agriculture and empower them to make healthier choices for themselves and their community.
- To provide youth workers with the tools, strategies and knowledge to be able to discuss environmental issues with young people.
- To enable the exchange and transfer of knowledge between EU countries and to set up a European network of urban gardens where dialogue, cooperation and exchange of ideas on citizen participation and environmental sustainability issues can be developed.