The ActJust project is a project about youth acting for climate justice by building a paradigm of online and offline engagement in covid era.
Nowadays, digital youth work and mobility has emerged as a new trend / practice in the youth field, as the use of innovative digital forms of participation increasingly motivates the youngsters to engage in action-led initiatives and policy making. COVID-19 has further underlined this trend, and many youth activities has been transferred online. Thus, this is the critical moment to shape the future of online youth engagement and mobility.
The aim of the project is to enhance civic and democratic engagement of youth at EU level, through a pilot-tested methodology, using digital means adapted to youth needs and contemporary reality. To achieve this, the partnership empowers and connects youth online, through European action-led initiatives and digital youth mobilities. Furthermore, it builds online and offline structured cooperation among youth NGOs, policy makers and institutional stakeholders to bring young people across the EU together and strengthen their European identity. The thematic area selected for testing the methodology is the Climate Justice, which lately receives increased interest from youth.
So far, the partnership defines the right mix of physical and digital activities needed to achieve the aforementioned objectives. Indicatively, 7 online discussions about climate and inequalities caused by the climate crisis at local and global level, took place in September 2021, in the 7 partner countries namely, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Serbia and Lithuania. 70 young people (10 in each country) have participated in total. In addition, the partners collaborate with the Youth Advisory Committee in order to create the Youth Agenda, a text that lists the priorities regarding goals and needs, set by young people in their online discussions. Last but most important, through a mobility in Milan on 16-21 March 2022, 35 people (28 young participants and 7 youth mentors who supported and guided the teams during the mobility), worked together and created a European Climate Action Framework. The planed initiatives concern the climate crisis, the inequalities created by it and its effect on the economy, social cohesion, gender and environment.
The groups will implement climate initiatives in their countries and will be back in Vilnius, Lithuania in July 2022, to present the results and lay the groundwork for the first policy recommendations.
