<< Background >>The Green Step project aspires to adopt a holistic approach to support, raise awareness, and build capacity about environmental and climate-change challenges in the sphere of adult education. The partnership has located a gap in adult education which still needs to be reoriented to help both adult educators and learners to develop knowledge, skills, values and behaviours needed for addressing and bringing issues, such as climate change into teaching and learning. In general, there is a lack of approaches and (local) activities to make citizens responsible for their own future in all partner countries. In fact, participatory methods are needed as well as innovative teaching tools and stimulating and engaging activities, in order to transmit fundamental issues of sustainability and climate change. Particularly, for the first target group (Adult learners, including migrant learners) there is a need to acquire new “green” skills that will support their transition to greener economies and societies, but also to help them transform themselves, i.e., to change their mindsets, which are made up of their values, beliefs, worldviews and associated cognitive/emotional capacities towards a sustainable life. Current behavioral patterns lie at the root of many sustainability challenges, thus working with those patterns can be important leverage points for change. For the second target group (Adult educators/trainers) there is a need for upskilling to enhance their (often low) sustainability skills. It is necessary to educate the population about these sustainability and climate change problems, how they arose, what are their causes and manifestations, but especially about methods to prevent and stop them. So, there is a need to train first the educators in this direction and to introduce into the curriculum subjects addressing those topics. This of course necessitates a whole community approach so that local communities and stakeholders (third target group) will employ strategies to become environmentally friendly and sustainable, including the support of green entrepreneurship. Given the above, we believe that through formal and informal education methods aimed especially at adults, our communities could set up the pathway to change.<< Objectives >>Through the Green Step project, the partnership aspires to: • To enhance awareness of the need for future-oriented curricula and methodologies for non-formal adult education that address the environmental and climate challenges of today’s societies • To experiment with new approaches to learning for sustainability and validate them empirically • To test innovative practices that will transform adult educators and learners, especially learners with migrant background, to eco-conscious, true agents for change • To promote a flexible, local learning programme adapted to the learning needs of adults, including migrants, around the issues of environmental sustainability, climate change and behavioral (inner) transformation • To engage the wider adult education community, as well as local sustainability stakeholders (local learning centres, civil society, NGOs, public authorities, etc) to support learners’, especially migrant learners’, transition to greener economies and societies by equipping them with skills for green jobs and motivating them to adopt sustainable lifestyles.<< Implementation >>Under project management and implementation a variety of activities will be implemented that secure the successful and time-effective development of the project. It is foreseen that a qualitative process, an impact assessment process, a communication and dissemination strategy, and a sustainability strategy will be employed throughout the project lifecycle to guarantee the accomplishment of Green Step. Moreover, a total number of 4 press releases/articles will be published and distributed via project and partners’ social media and websites that will coincide with important milestones of the project. Additionally, 3 dedicated face-to-face transnational partner meeting will be held in the Netherlands, Italy, and Cyprus in M1, M9, and M23 respectively. Moreover, a 3-day interactive training workshop for adult educators/trainers who have low sustainability skills and/or are interested in integrating training/teaching/learning sessions in their existing work with adult learners, particularly learners coming from vulnerable groups and/or having a migrant background will be held in Italy in M9. Dedicated multiplier events will be held in all partner countries and will aim to disseminate key concepts, objectives and results of The Green Step project; to introduce to attendants the personal stories of adult learners, including immigrants, who participated in The Green Step Community Programme; to build synergies between people; and engage the community, both local natives and immigrants. A final conference will be held in Cyprus in M23 with the aim to bring together all relevant stakeholders that participated in the Green Step forward-looking hubs of learning communities and share their experiences with regards to the development of a transnational sustainability network.<< Results >>The following project results will be developed by the consortium during the project lifecycle: PR1: THE GREEN STEP CURRICULUM aims to bridge the gap that exists in formal and non-formal adult education curricula and suggest an innovative curriculum that could function either as a standalone course material or as an addendum to existing integration curricula that lack the element of the education for sustainability. By using this curriculum, adult educators/trainers will help their learners, especially migrant learners, to understand and reflect on sustainability issues and how they could develop their competences in various sustainability-relevant sectors, as well as green skills in order to advance their social and economic empowerment and inclusion. PR2: THE GREEN STEP COMMUNITY PROGRAMME aims to promote the holistic development of adult learners by improving knowledge and skills associated with self-transformation in issues relevant to sustainability and climate action empowering learners of any cultural background to transform themselves and the community they live in; enabling a transition to greener economies and societies; equipping learners with skills for ‘green jobs’; motivating people to adopt sustainable lifestyles; stimulating learning and promoting core competences. PR3: THE GREEN STEP FORWARD-LOOKING NETWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES adopts a whole community approach to sustainability and climate action awareness in adult education which engages business, community leaders and public institutions and nonprofit sectors as to support local learning around sustainability and climate action, promote civic engagement of multiple stakeholders and offer life-wide sustainability based learning opportunities to anyone interested. Stakeholders mentioned above will work together to motivate and enable adult learners to learn green skills and key sustainability competences necessary to become active agents of change for themselves, their peers and community at large.