Climate Literacy for Youth

<< Background >>Our project had as starting point the idea that there is a need for improved education on environment for young people in all participating countries, Romania, Czech Republic, Latvia, Spain and France. As coming from small urban or other isolated areas from these countries, young people have limited access to qualitative institutional education that approaches topics such as the issues of climate change, scientific and media literacy in analyzing such issues, and the importance of being active citizens that act as green and eco protectors of the local communities in order to address environmental problems with specific instruments. In the initial phase of developing this project, we highlighted that 70% of schools in Romania and Spain do not equip young people with the necessary knowledge and skills related to climate change, and this has the potential to become a harmful practice for future generations, as fake news and wide-spread disinformation related to climate change have become a target for political discussions, rather than scientific understanding and progress. Our aim was to work together to develop this qualitative methodology in order to respond to the needs of young people in each participating country.<< Objectives >>As objectives, we have set that we aim to increase climate literacy skills for 150 young people in each participating country, by providing them with fundamental information related to sustainability, scientific facts about the Earth’s environment that are explained in a clear and easy manner for young people to comprehend, offering a curricula different from the ones present in school subjects such as Geography, while at the same time supporting a strong civic engagement among each community. Another objective was focused on digital skills and developing their media literacy aptitudes in order to be able to fact-check information they read online and to critically analyze popular articles that might spread disinformation related to climate change or the environment. Otherwise, we also focused on increasing the number of opportunities young people from small towns have when it comes to qualitative green education, but also to support the development and cooperation of our organisations, having in mind the development of instruments and methodologies to further use in our work, as well as connected small communities for a meaningful cause. << Implementation >>Our Spanish partners developed templates for the research phase, including surveys for young people and a collection of best practices. We successfully surveyed 200 young people in each local community, totaling 1,000 participants. Subsequently, we gathered national best practices on fundamental environmental knowledge, news analysis, and methods for active engagement at local, national, and international levels, enabling us to create an attractive guideline available both online, on the website and social media, and printed for our target youth groups. Over a 7-day period in each country, organizations trained 30 young people using non-formal educational tools to teach environmental facts, major climate change issues, relevant terminology, reliable news source identification, fact-checking, and awareness campaign development. To facilitate transnational communication, we created a WhatsApp group for all 150 participants. The participants, aged 15 to 19, developed and implemented awareness campaigns in their schools and local communities to have a real local impact. Finally, we disseminated our results through an online conference.<< Results >>The concrete results of our project, and as of implementing each of the proposed activities included: two research templates that can further be used to analyze the needs and good practices related to environment, climate change and sustainability; a handbook of 60 pages that contains both the findings of the needs of young people in each participating country, and good practices that can be implemented in order to further develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes of our target groups; a training format containing a methodology of 7 days with useful non-formal instruments that can develop both the participants’ environmental knowledge and their critical thinking and green skills; awareness campaigns directed and managed by young people in the local schools and youth clubs; an online final conference agenda created in 4 different modules of presenting the results, having interactive online quizzes on Kahoot, testimonials of participants and engaging instruments; an online website containing all materials and results; a WhatsApp group that connected participants from all countries.