"<< Background >>With over a third of the EU27 population under the age of 30, the impact of this generation on Europe’s future, magnanimously put, is gargantuan. History, though, plays a crucial role in determining which societal section and region has the most impact. For today, promulgation of green skills, building up green-savvy ways of life are the best insurance against impending effects of climate change in the face of lethargy.Youth across Europe have gradually taken the onus on them to reduce their carbon footprint. Europe already stands testimony to green ways of life, but as 97% of Europe’s current forests are ‘reforested’, the impact of industrialisation is evident in every sphere of society, from the Ruhr valley in Germany to the Carpathian mountains in Poland to scenic lakes in Luxembourg to the beaches near Gandia and the pine-covered mountain peaks in Basilicata.Youth can positively impact the climate scene. Youth should positively impact the climate scene. This project has been inspired from a delayed COP26 that should have been held in December 2020 in Glasgow. The pandemic has bought people from all walks of life together. Youth in the village and in the city, divided by their surroundings have been united by a passion to react, to act. This project is a joint venture between youth and the environment, between urban and rural settings, between the will to act and actually take the first step.In French, JV can also stand for ‘Jeunes et des espaces vertes’, or youth and green spaces. This is what this project aims to do. Empowering youth with skills, DIY techniques, brainstorming to find solutions to sustainable ways of life, to travel, to use the informatics services, all in the name of climate action.Through Joint Ventures: Jeunes et des espaces vertes, we target:Common values, civic engagement and participationYouth who come together for the training activities, work to produce the results and partake in the multiplier events and other project’s related discussion are those who value working together to improve steps taken towards climatic action. This collective concerted action, both in rural and urban areas is through civic engagement, participation and collaborative work. Increasing quality, innovation and recognition of youth workUp-skilling youth, imparting them green-life skills, capacity building in skills concerning environment, green action, empowering them to act autonomously by providing them with tools and ideas will ensure the decentralised method of action improves quality, the networking across youth will allow them to innovate and the work they do will be recognised at the local, regional and national level.Environment and fight against climate changeThe project’s French title is Youth and Green spaces. This is a joint venture between youth and the environment, among others to fight the issue of climate change. In designing this project, we also target the joint venture between rural and urban communities for the air we breathe is all the same, everyone needs to act, across borders and nations to bring about collective climate action.Other thematics the project addresses are Green Skills, Key Competences Development and Climate-Smart youth.The needs of the partnership in structuring the project has been to concentrate on the transversal strengths of each partner of the consortium. With partners from Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Spain and Italy, the project caters to the common need to create a resilient society for and with youth.<< Objectives >>The greater objective of Joint Ventures: Jeunes et des espaces vertes is to create healthy, climate-smart resilient societies in Europe by tapping into the youth potential, working transversally across the urban and rural sectors aiding them to improve their existing skills and learn others including organising summer camps and weekend camping-style getaways in nature. We work towards this by doing our little bit through these two training activities bringing learners from across Europe and using this learned material to prepare our outputs, Green-Life Skills: An Illustrative Handbook & Summer Camp Guide for Urban and Rural Europe and Online-Coordination Platform for Youth Summer Camps.The concrete objectives of our project are:(i) capacity-building of youth on green-life skills(ii) refining the attitude of youth towards climate change, through practical examples and long-term impact examples(iii) provide youth exciting ways to contribute tangibly to concerted climate action(iv) impart green-life skills to youth, especially in adherence to WHO’s definition of life skills 'abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life' to aid in green youth work(v) support creation of local summer camps by providing youth a handbook and an online platform allowing youth to network, organise and lead such camps to further involve others in the ‘green-marathon’The battle to own back our future for youth is an existential one. Hence, the ‘green marathon’ is won by supporting small green ideas, projects, support structures, youth organisations, climate-smart activities, climate-neutral modes of transportation, all ushered in through a renewed vigour to address the advocacy and policy part to prod decision-makers to make sound decisions for the future of today’s young generation, to allow them to breathe the air of freedom without fear of climate-induced displacement and uncertainty to enjoy forests, the snow on the Alps or water in our rivers. The appeal to join in the ‘green marathon’ of climate-smart youth towards working one step at a time for better futures for all is central to the activities and the results designed in this project, imparting green-life skills to youth.<< Implementation >>The Joint Venture: Jeunes et des espaces vertes project is a joint venture between two activities in themselves and two results. The activities that we will implement under the auspices of this project are:The first activity is titled: Urban VenturesThe activity focusses on the concerted civic action in urban spaces being held in an urban region. The activity delves on how urban youth can contribute to reducing their carbon footprint through little steps, DIY tricks that youth can do in their homes, on energy-saving techniques, on sourcing energy from verifiable renewable energy suppliers, on motivation to internet-savvy youth to develop greener apps with lesser code, ideas on waste use, waste recycling, reuse and upcycling.The second activity is titled: Rural venturesHere, the participants find themselves in a rural setting and learn about weekend getaways, camping areas or a summer camp. They will come together and work to create some items themselves through hand-on learning activities, like repairing existing public structures, gardens, create items from natural materials like benches, sun shades and learn about composting, gardening, everything that can be done in nature. Participants will also learn on managing summer camps that will allow them to further organise them through the handbook and the online-platform that will be made as part of the results of the project.Implementing these activities allows us to learn from youth, while simultaneously understand them better. We will also be implementing multiplier events in each country to further allow youth in each of the participating countries to positively exploit our results and empower themselves, an action through which we expect youth to engage in more climate-friendly activities in urban and rural areas while also undertaking a renewed interest through clarity to organise, conduct and benefit from summer camps. The multiplier events will be held in Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Spain and Italy targeting youth, youth NGOs, climate activists, local authorities wishing to undertake activities for youth, among others.<< Results >>The succour we provide to ensuring Joint Ventures: Jeunes et des espaces vertes, its aims and ideals remain sustainable are through our two results:Result 1: Green-Life Skills: An Illustrative Handbook & Summer Camp Guide for Urban and Rural EuropeA picture speaks a thousand words they say. Hence, the partners of the consortium have decided to create a handbook with urban and rural green-life skills to which will be appended a toolbook to conceive, create and run summer camps. The partners Europejskie Forum Mlodziezy ""Fraternitas”, Youth Europe Service and Xeracion Valencia have experience in working on camps for youth, who will support in creating the result so it can be used by others across Europe.Result 2: Online-Coordination Platform for European Summer CampsA platform to search for and coordinate summer camps, that will primarily serve rural woodlands of Europe but will also target semi-urban areas will help the youth groups to network and work on developing green youth work. The platform will have the steps in the handbook available for users on a Europe-wide basis that will help them understand the stages of organisation, implementation and follow-up of summer camps.The long-term impact of the project is:(i) resilient societies ushered in by resilient youth from both urban and rural areas(ii) creation of structures to allow youth to develop their ‘green skills’ to invent innovative solutions to combat climate change(iii) understand the value of reducing the individual carbon footprint and taking actual steps to do it, including a change in lifestyle(iv) using the tips and techniques in the handbook to undertake actual activities, even as a weekend-affair in multiple regions(v) network with other regions across Europe and spread tips, tricks and other ideas on collective youth-led climate action(vi) contribute ideas and to the discussion towards the European Commission’s Europe-wide digital platform for the Conference on the Future of Europe with #TheFutureIsYours(vii) build team-skills and life-skills in youth, as defined by the WHO(viii) awareness-raising on waste use, reduction, recycling and upcyclingTransferability Potential of the two results:(i) To countries that are not involved in this project but have a culture of involving youth in environmental action(ii) Countries and regions that have vast swathes of forests and lakes(iii) Countries, cities and communities tending towards becoming climate-neutral(iv) Additional translations, when commissioned could also help furthering the result’s outreachTo ensure we, as the resilient society of Europe are always on road, running the ‘green marathon’, the project targets small actions, for every big journey begins but with a single step, our project Joint Ventures: Jeunes et des espaces vertes is but one of them."

<< Background >>Inclusive societies are a priority of the European Union. In working to create inclusive societies, multiple actors spread across the societal strata have to come together to work, consistently, over multiple years to create tangible societal change.Gender imbalance has been highlighted as a priority case towards achieving inclusive societies. In striving to work for gender equality across all spheres, numerous countries have hitherto realised the value of the girl child, the young women who will build a strong society for tomorrow. Young women are an ASSET to tomorrow’s Europe. Hence, we actually need to be Acting to Stop the Silent Epidemic Together supporting to have Resilient Young Women.Our society of today, especially exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic has gone astray in its willingness to support young women come out of the pandemic unscathed. Violence towards women has gone underreported especially since March 2020. As lockdowns kept getting extended, so did the incessant atrocities committed by partners, fathers, husbands, to name a few on young women they knew, the silent pandemic still rages on. Many cases of young women being domestically abused, sexually exploited, coerced into marriage and murdered went largely unreported. Statistics and law-enforcement agencies recorded fewer cases. As the old adage goes, out of sight, out of mind. Young women have disproportionately borne the brunt of the current pandemic.Women, irrespective of their age are impacted by gender-based violence. Our project wishes to selectively target young women as we believe they have been the most disproportionately affected by this issue. Young women dream to have a stable and successful career, wish to be independent in their decisions and finally believe that the world should be an equal place. Our project, wishes to do its little bit but supporting young women across the partner countries and thereafter across Europe to support them by combating this evil phenomenon in our society.Through Project ASSET, we target:The Valorous ASSET, oriented towards ideas of self-valuing, experience sharing while ensuring the participants come together to feel included in today’s diverse society. Speaking out about the silent epidemic and giving it a voice will allow it to come out of the shadows and making it aware in the minds of the populations.The Resilient ASSETs on synergy across groups of people separated by distance can be built through common stories of strength, on overcoming difficult situations by sourcing actual implications of past events that can be seen as best practices in today’s light. Tangible Solutions as Europe’s Real ASSET with the intellectual powerhouse that Europe is, would allow the partners of the consortium to support its young women in creating a better future for them. When young women are empowered, society benefits as a whole. Thematics and topics in this project include inclusion and diversity, common values, civic engagement and participation, reinforcing links between policy, research and practice, inclusion of marginalised young people, promoting gender equality and physical and mental health and well-being.The partnership, spanning across multiple European countries and extending into the Mediterranean is vital to understand the latent mindset of the populations to combat the issue of violence against young women. Each country and population is unique in the way they tackle the issue, even if the problem is the same. Our strength in this partnership will be the diversity of voices at play.Project ASSET, conceived as a real responsive intervention to the atrocities committed before and during the pandemic addresses the silent part of today’s society and media when it comes to crimes committed against young women.<< Objectives >>The greater objective of Acting to Stop the Silent Epidemic Together: Resilient Young Women is to create healthy and resilient societies in Europe by raising awareness on the issue of gender-based violence, tapping into women’s networks while providing tools and life-skills for young women across multiple sectors. The partnership consortium wishes to do its bit in working towards supporting young women to counter violence and femicidal tendencies through self-strengthening and reinforcement through capacity building and recognition. These objectives will be achieved through three LTTAs: (i) Valorous ASSET (sharing experiences with psychosocial support); (ii) Resilient ASSETs (exchange of best practices and research on empowerment); (iii) Tangible Solutions: Europe’s Real ASSET (capacity building through networking, resilience engrained) and through the production of R1: (iv) Europe’s ASSET: A Handbook with Policy Recommendations and a PlatformThe concrete objectives of the project are:(i) Capacity-building through expert interventions to support young women to think alternatively(ii) Supporting victims of gender-based violence(iii) Providing a space for young women to be heard, share their views and jointly develop measures that they can use to support themselves and others(iv) Ensuring the opportunity to support young women, especially in the vulnerable years as they look to build a career and their lives is not lost(v) Empowering young women to recognise elements and facets of violence in their lives and those of others to provide self and communal support<< Implementation >>Each of the activities under Project Acting to Stop the Silent Epidemic Together: Resilient Young Women concentrate on one of the three sections that have been thought of to be central to having a wholesome understanding of the situation. Through opening such activities to persons with different profiles (learners, young people while extrapolating them to youth workers), our activities are tailored to reach out to those who need such support, re-empowerment, capacity building and networking the most.Activity 1 Title: Valorous ASSETIt is oriented towards ideas of self-valuing, experience sharing while ensuring the participants come together to feel included in today’s diverse society. Speaking out about the silent epidemic and giving it a voice will allow it to come out of the shadows and making it aware in the minds of the populations.Activity 2 Title: Resilient ASSETsSynergy across groups of people separated by distance can be built through common stories of strength, on overcoming difficult situations by sourcing actual implications of past events that can be seen as best practices in today’s light. Sometimes, actual work done in one country could be applied in the case of another country to ensure the young women get the support they need in a pre-fashioned manner.Activity 3 Title: Tangible Solutions: Europe’s Real ASSETThe intellectual powerhouse that Europe is, will allow the partners of the consortium to support its young women in creating a better future for them. Tools and life-skills that have been learnt from the previous two activities will be used as the foundations to envisage having tomorrow’s resilient young women. This activity will also bring together practitioners as facilitators to brain storm with the participants on how new networks could help alleviate the existing pain on the targeted young women or ensure they never go down this spiral.We work towards this by doing our little bit through these three training activities bringing learners and young people from across Europe and using this learned material to prepare our output Handbook and the platform.<< Results >>Under Project Acting to Stop the Silent Epidemic Together: Resilient Young Women, the result is titled Europe’s ASSET: A Handbook with Policy Recommendations and a Platform is tailored to young women in and around Europe. The result is two-fold, comprising of(i) Handbook with Policy Recommendations(ii) A Web-Platform to bring the synergies of the project consortium and other future partners togetherThis handbook will be supported by the digital web platform that will allow to network and connect, available in six European languages. The handbook with policy recommendations per se will be available for download as a PDF from the online-platform, the project’s website and also from the partner organisations’ websites.The handbook will present lessons learnt including best practices and research assimilated from the LTTAs in order to provide a compendium that youth workers, young people and researchers across Europe will be able to use in working with young women, especially those vulnerable to gender-based violence. Case-studies under anonymous names will be further included to support potential beneficiaries to learn real-life scenarios and apply them in their daily work.The long term impact of project ASSET would be:(i) Creating long-term capacity building initiatives across trans-european regions(ii) Allowing young women to gather support(iii) Supporting young women to reach out to support networks and organisations(iv) Build life-skills in youth and young women, as defined by the WHO(v) Create an egalitarian society where violence against women will be shunned upon(vi) Having resilient policies in place that will support young women who are victims of violenceTransferability Potential of the result:- The issue of femicide and gender-based violence is prevalent in every single European country, thence the potential to use the lessons learnt is high by all our target beneficiaries- Countries, cities and communities tending to work on gender-related issues, especially when wishing to extend support to young women- Additional translations, when commissioned could also help furthering the result’s outreachProject ASSET envisages working through the partners existing expertise on youth, young women, gender-specific priorities besides transnational action to generate a cascade effect of strengthening the current capacity to support, empower and provide valuable life-skills and tools to young women, items and thematics that will be dealt with through the proposed result.

<< Objectives >>Social entrepreneurship is often perceived as a mechanism to address unfair situations contributing to exclusion, marginalisation or suffering within segments of society. Our proposal ‘Youth in Entrepreneurship: Socially We Change through Abundant Notions’ will up-skill youth, providing them market-ready skills in social entrepreneurship to support European communities become sustainable, resourceful and competitive. We will train 40 beneficiaries and engage at least 230 stakeholders in events.<< Implementation >>We will implement (i) two training activities:a. Basics on YES (Youth, Entrepreneurship, Social): 20 beneficiariesb. Market-ready Social Entrepreneurs: 20 beneficiaries(ii) one virtual panel discussion to exploit the resultsa. Social Entrepreneurship as a Career Option: 30 attendees(iii) five local physical outreach activities to exploit and communicate the results (40 attendees each)a. Polandb. Greecec. Maltad. Lithuaniae. Romania<< Results >>We will create the following deliverables:(i) Compilation of Best Practices: Notions for Social Entrepreneurship (M6)(ii) Creation of Social Entrepreneurship Environmental Handbook (SEEH) (M21)We expect to target marginalised youth and youth in NEET in five European countries to impart them knowledge on social entrepreneurship through this project.