RATIONALEA growing amount of civil initiatives and grassroots movements all over Europe is creating innovative community-led sustainable projects and new lifestyles in their transition to a more just, sustainable and resilient future. Creating a low carbon society needs active engagement of civil society. This project aims to assist and support groups starting community-led sustainable projects with an adult education response, especially in terms of social skills as it turns out that many projects are failing due to lack of the necessary social and group communication skills. The project is created in response to a need for such increased levels of awareness and collaborative practice to spark change and development in a specific, sustainable direction. This project addresses the need for an integrated approach in Education for Sustainable Development that blends ecological, economic, social and cultural aspects in a balanced way.PARTNERSHIPThe nine organisations that form the SCIPP project represent large networks of sustainable communities and grassroots initiatives throughout Europe. All project partners are active in the field of adult education for sustainable development in which ecological, economical, social and cultural aspects are integrated into a holistic approach. The partnership is based on shared, converging interests within change processes in response to increasingly interconnected global challenges. The partners were Global Ecovillage Network - Europe (lead partner), LØS (Denmark), Trajnostni Park Istra (Slovenia), GEN International (UK), RIVE (Italy), EÖÜ (Estonia), Fundacja “Ogrody Permakultury”; EcodorpenNetwerk (Netherlands) and RIE (Spain).SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES INCUBATORThe core-output of the project is the so called „CLIPS-guide“. CLIPS is an acronym for „Community Learning Incubator Program for Sustainability“. The framework that was developed is explained in this 65-page document, available for download on the CLIPS ICT platform. The document raises a number of crucial points that contribute to community-led sustainable projects thriving or failing and is targeted at trainers and participants alike.Methods and material from all partner countries has been gathered and published on the CLIPS- ICT platform in the toolkit section. The core information has been published in 9 different languages. Much more information is available in English, the working language of the partnership. In a series of six transnational meetings the CLIPS-framework has been developed and fine-tuned, and existing training materials have been transformed in a collective and co-creative way into a CLIPS Training and a supplementary TOT (training of trainers). Both trainings have been held with 16 - 20 participants from all partner countries and gotten a very positive feedback – the participants are now applying the CLIPS-model in their projects.A comprehensive ICT platform complements the CLIPS guide with the toolkit section, an assessment tool, an online-support-forum and more.DISSEMINATIONThe project results have been disseminated through the wider networks of the partners consisting of networks of ecological communities and other stakeholders, on both local, regional, national, European and international levels by utilizing existing channels, both internal and external. The result of the project has been presented at many events and therefore inspired many other members of the network as well as many more organization, initiatives and individuals. At a regional and national level, project partners have integrated CLIPS in their own educational work and offered different kinds of CLIPS-workshops – for their own members and for a wider audience tin 20 trainings totaling 450 participants until the end of the project. TARGET GROUPSTarget groups of the partnership were 1) the facilitators, trainers and consultants that actively engage in the partnership and the trainees of the pilot incubator training,2) trainers, educators and facilitators active in the field of ESD,3) people from urban and rural sustainable community-led sustainable projects4) green and social entrepreneurs and5) other relevant stakeholders such as research institutes and universities, municipalities, decision makers and other government bodies as well as (international) NGO’s active in sustainable development.Special target groups were people in disadvantaged and rural areas and green and social entrepreneurs.OUTCOMESThe outcomes of this project is a very easy-to-apply framework called „CLIPS“ to create awareness of what is needed to start successful community-led sustainable projects. „CLIPS“ strengthens community-led sustainable projects all over Europe by spreading access and knowledge about innovative tools for community building and social project design. It provides a better understanding of participatory structures towards cooperative thinking approaches and co-creation attitudes and a network approach

This strategic partnership is centered on the exchange of good practice regarding sustainability youth exchanges and specifically the question how the partners can support young people to create successful and high quality youth exchange projects. It reflects the European Youth Goal ‘Sustainable Green Europe’.The project partners are:- the German branch of the Global Ecovillage Network of Europe (coordinating partner);- the Spanish branch of the Global Ecovillage Network of Europe;- GEN Deutschland (Germany)- Red Ibérica de Ecoaldeas (Spain)- Rete Italiana Villaggi Ecologici (Italy)- Ecodorpen Netwerk (Netherlands)- Zavod Veles (Slovenia)- Zeleno Doba (Serbia)‘YES to Sustainability‘ (YTS) is a series of youth exchanges in ecovillages and local sustainability projects for young adults that address different aspects of sustainability, around which an informal and very loose network of individuals (mainly young people) and organisations has formed.An ecovillage is an intentional or traditional community that is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate social and natural environments. The 4 dimensions of sustainability (ecology, economy, the social and the cultural) are integrated into a holistic approach.Ecovillages have been piloting low carbon lifestyles inspiring bottom-up changes that complement policy reform. Lifestyle changes and climate-friendly choices are needed to keep global warming within planetary boundaries. Ever more youth are becoming aware of the climate crisis and other global issues, demanding change and looking for answers.The partner organisations know many very motivated and engaged young people willing to put time and effort into developing and applying for YTS youth exchanges, but success rates are discouragingly low. How can we support youth to develop quality youth exchanges? This is the main focus, topic and aim of this project.The project output is a 20-page brochure ‘Success factors in sustainability youth exchanges’ that will be freely accessible online. Through a peer learning process, where the partners exchange their experiences and good practice around sustainability youth exchanges, success factors and quality indicators for designing sustainability youth exchanges are identified. The brochure includes good practice examples that may be helpful for others in designing their sustainability youth exchange projects. One topic is how to design a youth exchange sustainably with a low carbon footprint.The project activity ‘Mentoring and YTS Youth Exchanges Support Scheme’ aims at supporting newcomers to design quality projects - usually participants of YTS youth exchanges (= young people) who want to step up to become organisers and group leaders of sustainability youth exchanges. The partners share their experiences and reflect together - experiment with different modalities - run small pilots testing different mentoring approaches - ask for detailed feedback from the target group - identify the most promising ones (possibly to be fully developed in future projects). This process allows the partners to develop capacity to better respond to the need of willing and motivated youth for support in developing quality projects.Part of the exchange process are two peer-learning trainings for the youth workers of all participating organisations and four long-term mobilities of youth workers. These activities significantly deepen the exchange between partners and improve the quality of project results.The consortium will reach out to a large number of stakeholders, young people and particularly those who are willing to step up and become organisers of sustainability youth exchanges, local sustainability projects that are potential hosts and youth organisations. Various networking activities, particularly on social media, will contribute to making ‘YES to Sustainability‘ more well known among young people, promote exchange about sustainable ways of life and foster peer learning.The project results will be widely disseminated online and offline to many relevant stakeholders. The partner GEN Europe, the European umbrella organisation of ecovillages, plays a crucial role in spreading widely to a very large number of sustainability projects in over 30 countries. It’s youth wing NextGEN will contribute to making the project more well known among young people.Through the project, young people are supported to become active citizens and change agents towards a low carbon society as organisers and group leaders in sustainability youth exchanges.

Sociocracy is a governance model capable of adressing particpatory descentralized organizations and networks, ensuring equivalence of all members needs and guranteeing effectiveness of operations. It is based on the consent decision making model and includes procedures and sistems for election by consent, cirlce (department) formation, role descriptions, reviews for actions and roles, proposal forming as well as building feedback loops between circles through double linking members.The partnership is formed by 3 national umbrella organizations for grass roots local citizens innitiative groups (CIGs) for ecological and social sustainability and one University. Ecovillages, social entreprizes, farmers and consumer cooperatives, adult training centers and organizations, cultural and arts oriented groups are some of the examples of CIGs.Through this partnership it is aimed to make sociocracy more accesible, adaptable and create an academic research that can describe the dynamics and outcomes of implemntation. There are 4 objectives: 1. professionalize 30 staff and trainers and increase their facilitation skills and capacity (through a Sociocracy Facilitator Training Course designed in the partnership),2. upgrade the governance models in ART, RIE, RIVE (the umbrella organizations) and several CIGs to sociocracy thus decreasing time and resource usage for routine activity, motivating members and becoming more attractive for volunteers and improving the quality of financial administration and fundraising. (Research will reveal exact quantitative change). 3. streamline communication and collaboration between the partners, CIGs and European level umbrella organizations by developing a coherent shared organizational culture and set of protocols. 12 NGOs and networks wish to implement simultaneously (creating online communities of learning that allign best practices).4. develop a library of open virtual resources (LOVR) that supports trainers and learners and demonstrates effectiveness in the context of diversity and socio-economic challenges, decreases conflicts and improves the democratic and intercultural value-base. (will Introduce it to 225 participants through multiplier events and 500 participants through SFTCs organized by the 30 professional staff and trainers). 355 participants will benefit directly in this project (coming from the 4 partner organizations, the CIGs forming their networks, the 12 organizations and national networks commited to simultaneously implement sociocracy and the European level and International networks of Global Ecovillage Network and Transition Towns Network) 29850 will benefit indirectly. They will mostly be members of the same networks, often collegues of the directly involved participants, but also a wide range of organizations accesing the Library of Open Virtual Resources.For managing this project sociocracy will be used together with other methodologies. It will be a process of testing while developing the resources and best practices and 'walking the talk'. Because it is a governance model it ensure quality of outcomes and lean managemnt. The mentioned Library will be hosted on an already set up creative commons license resource platform called sociocracy30.org. The implementation and learning value of the library will be complemented by the development of a Sociocracy Facilitation Training course (a 7 day intensive course format). A first training will be caried out for the 30 selcted staff and 7 multiplier events will eensure succesful dissemination of the platform and the creation of Virtual Communities of Learning exchanging best practices and engaging with the resource library.A research study will be carried out thoughout the duration of the partnership and will create the first solid academic model about the implications and consequences of implementing sociocracy. It will allow tailor fitting implementation and creatinga quality ensurance for CIGs allowing them to collaborate more with private and public sector organizations.In addition to creating a pool of facilitators and making socicracy 3.0 more accesible and adaptable for a wider range of organizations and networks, the partnership will strengthen the activity of the partners themselves and the European and International networks they are part of. Because these networks are servinga and supporting local CIGs working for implemnting sustainable solutions in their communities, this partnership will generate a levarage effect in the capacity of these networks and groups to create real life change for disadvantage groups and adress European scale social and environmental issues. These effects are the long term outcomes evolving beyond the 2 year lifecycle of the partnership.

CLIPS (Community Learning Incubator Program for Sustainability) has 10 partner organisations (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden) and 2 umbrella organisations, ECOLISE and GEN International, as primary associated partners. The project is a follow-up of the strategic partnership „Sustainable Communities Incubator Partnership Programme“ (SCIPP), with 8 partner countries from 2015-2017. SCIPP developed as its most important results a comprehensive conceptual framework for Incubator trainings and an Incubator ICT platform.The target group of incubator trainings are active citizens involved in community-led sustainable projects, especially start-ups e.g. transition initiatives, ecovillages, permaculture projects, co-housing settlements etc. Many community-led sustainable projects are currently blossoming all over Europe, working towards a more sustainable path of life; worried about the climate crisis and searching for more sustainable lifestyles, connecting the local with the global, aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals in a local and citizen driven mode of implementation. Often, members of such projects cooperate with and respond to political priorities for local municipalities as well. These conditions jointly form the background for this project. A notably high number of groups starting sustainable projects fail within the first 2-3 years. CLIPS addresses this issue with its mission of providing learning materials for trainings and Incubation programs which assist these groups to succeed and to continue thriving. Most of the partners are networks of grassroots initiatives, mostly national umbrella organisations and many from the ecovillage movement. It was decided to include four new countries, for enhanced outreach and new perspectives. The CLIPS project pursued the following goals: - Addition of specific developed CLIPS tools and methodology catering for different learning styles - Build the capacity and increase the pool of CLIPS trainers - Introduce and spread CLIPS to additional countries The OVERALL OBJECTIVE of the project was to assist COMMUNITY-LED PROJECTS TO THRIVE through adequate and customizable tools and methods. There are two main target groups involved in this project, being active citizens creating community-led sustainable projects; the target group CLIPS trainings are designed for - and trainers working with the CLIPS framework and tools, delivering CLIPS trainings The partnership produced 3 main outputs using a participatory approach co-creating innovative learning tools. These cater to different styles of learning, bringing additional practical, playful and inspirational tools: 1. CLIPS Method Toolkit -25 methods for CLIPS trainings with a detailed how-to description for trainers (minimum 12 of them have been translated in all partner languages) 2. A didactic board game on group dynamics as an interactive learning tool (translated in all partner languages) 3. Best practice examples and success stories, using a storytelling approach to portray real life examples, including inspirational videos (a pilot in three countries). The project activities included many events, besides Transnational Project Meetings (of which one was cancelled due to covid restrictions). The designing of a didactic board game needed extensive testing to optimize the rules, conducted through national activities of selected partners, multiplier events targeted at trainers testing the prototype. The CLIPS Method Toolkit has been tested in a blended mobility of learners in the form of a pilot training. The entire project team of all participating trainers is trained in the use of the intellectual outputs through internal training. Additionally trainers from each partner organisation were trained in a ToT event, thus contributing to capacity building of qualified trainers. Also national Multiplier Events contributed to disseminating the project results to 150 trainers from different organisations. Furthermore, national Incubator trainings have been organised by partner countries, targeted community-led sustainable projects. The expected results of the project include, in the long term: - Empowerment for people to become active and start community-led sustainable projects - Quality improvement in the design, management and implementation of community-led sustainable projects - Higher success rates for community-led sustainable projects starting up.This project is part of a bigger vision and the continuation of a longer process. The incubator is intended to become a widespread and much needed and demanded service. With CLIPS, the Incubator has been introduced in 13 European countries. The aim is to spread it to at least 20 countries over the next years, as a programme shaping the future of citizen-led transition. All results are available on the webpage: https://clips.gen-europe.org/