The Project EYES

European program for citizen engagement to involve young people in ecological transition and to inﬂuence public decision-making.

These YIT will develop a research, a survey to other young people, and interviews to identify the key fears and barriers from the youth perspective on energy and climate. This will improve their skills on analysing social matters, and on co-creating positive solutions to the barriers identified. This process will be mentored by a multidisciplinary Advisory Board (AB), composed by representatives of relevant stakeholders, who will act as role models for different climate change profiles. At the end of the YIT activities, they will produce Recommendations for policy makers on energy and climate planning, and on how to engage youth in these topics.

The collective process with other young people and the Advisory Boards will increase their capacities to dialogue and their civic and social competences. The learnings and the skills gained through the methodology will be assessed through a survey and through the qualitative opinion of the members of the Advisory Boards.

EYES will demonstrate that youth participation in public matters can have 3 relevant impacts

Foster social cohesion among young people

Improve young people’s civic skills

Improve local plans by providing the youth perspective to the policy makers

What is EYES ?

EYES intends to implement and evaluate an innovative method based on youth participation on the energy and climate local planning. Climate change is a global challenge that will especially affect young generations. However, young generations don’t usually have a voice on energy and climate planning. In addition, vulnerable communities are more likely to suffer climate change effects while they usually have more difficulty having their voice represented. As such, young people from vulnerable communities represent a sector of society that is both hard to reach and especially disempowered on that topic.

EYES will create Youth Intervention Teams (YIT), spaces for dialogue on energy and climate change for young people from different backgrounds. Emphasis will be put on the composition of its members, ensuring they represent different social backgrounds to foster mutual understanding.

The EYES project consortium is represented by 8 partners in 6 different countries :

Ecoserveis with the City of Granollers (EYES in Spain)
EC Network with EUC Syd (EYES in Denmark)
Agence Locale de l’Energie et du Climat de la Métropole de Lyon (EYES in France)
Agenzia Napoletana Energia e Ambiente (EYES in Italy)
Union of Bulgarian Black Sea Local Authorities (EYES in Bulgaria)
Polish Network “Energie Cités” (EYES in Poland)

Each partner contribute to set up and coordinate the project at national and local level.

Developing and implementing innovative methods and practices to foster inclusive education and/or youth environments in specific contexts

Project Goals

The purpose of the project is to involve a group of young people (aged 17 – 29 years) in local climate and energy planning, targeting specifically vulnerable groups of youth.

General Objective

Developing and implementing innovative methods and practices to foster inclusive education and/or youth environments in specific contexts.

Specific Objectives

Enhancing the acquisition of social and civic competences, fostering knowledge, understanding and ownership of values and fundamental rights.

Challenges

and how the project addressed them

Citizenship participation is becoming a common tool for political participation of citizens at local, regional or national level, but at the same time it has been proven a powerful tool to develop civic skills, values and competences for active citizenship, like :

Increased capacity to analyse a phenomenon or a social problem of common interest (Diagnosis)

Increased capacity to structure the relations between the relevant stakeholders

Analysis of potential impacts to different target groups

Enhances creative ways for solving problems

Abilities to imagine different future scenarios and its consequences

Better communication skills

Team skills to work with several group profiles

Capacity to listen to a diversity of opinions and discuss consensus

The project addresses two main challenges

Tackling inequality in education and public representation of different groups of young people

Tackling marginalization of hard to reach vulnerable young people who are more likely to be affected by climate change than others

Key features

and elements of the project

Support policy reform

EYES directly leads to energy and climate change planning reforms at local level in the municipalities involved

Innovative practices

While non-formal education is common in EU countries through, for instance volunteering or traineeship; this project goes a step further and combines the idea of bottom-up and top-down knowledge and skills transfer mainly being the Advisory Board and local project partner the ones transferring and facilitating knowledge, and the YITs the ones using their skills (which will be developed/strengthened through the project)

Creation of synergies

Tackling climate change is a cutting-cross challenge that involves public and private organizations. As such, the Advisory Board will include experts from different areas that will share experience to create workshops and guide the YITs

Context

Vulnerable young people most affected by climate change (CC)
Vulnerable young people the less heard

Challenge

Tackle inequality among young people to empower them and mitigate the effects of CC on them

Methodology

Create Young Intervention Team of young people with different backgrounds to foster dialogue
Develop Advisory Boards of experts that will act as role models to empower them

Activities

The YIT develops a research to analyse what are the main motivations and fears of young people on tackling climate change
The YIT creates a Climate Action Plan with the help of the Advisory Boards