23 – 28 August 2021
Maribor

In the framework of the Inclusive Transeuropean Environmentalism (ITE) project, led by Epeka Berlin, we hosted a youth exchange in Maribor from 23 to 28 August.

The project follows two intertwined lines. Firstly, in our work, we have often detected serious environmental concerns among the young people involved in the activities we organise. Although they are aware of the threats posed by our impact on the environment, they often lack the concrete knowledge that would empower them to organise and bring about change in their societies. Young people in all partner countries expressed the need for a more structured approach to learning about climate change, and in particular about the ways in which young people can contribute to change at local and national level. Secondly, addressing climate change offers an as yet underutilised opportunity to engage with young people from marginalised groups in society and to promote diversity and intercultural dialogue in the context of addressing climate change. This is particularly important as Europe faces future waves of climate migrants. Youth workers in the partner organisations expressed the need to acquire new skills in working with marginalised youth who face discrimination on cultural, religious, ethnic and other grounds. They include young people of Roma and refugee origin in all partner countries. Thus, we aim to implement ITE to train youth workers coming from different EU countries on how to address climate change, how to organise young people and transfer organisational skills to them, and how to work with groups of young people with different socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The activity we hosted in Maribor consisted of an active multi-day programme including workshops, visits to good practices, meetings with stakeholders and public interventions.

19 youth workers from Germany, Greece, Hungary, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovenia participated in the activity.

The project is funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme.