Environmental awareness, artistic expression, empowerment and entrepreneurship education for young people with fewer opportunities are the objectives of the Community Challengers Model, which is the essence of the project “Community Challengers: towards sustainable and climate-smart communities through arts and social entrepreneurship”. The choice of climate action in combination with the tools of awareness raising, arts, social entrepreneurship and advocacy is defined by the current global environmental crisis and the call of young people to take urgent measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. Climate emergency has been declared by many governments and communities since 2019 and has been the target of many European and global policies, e.g. European Green Deal, European Youth Strategy, Sustainable Development Goals. However, more awareness raising, more green skills and more collaboration is needed at multiple levels to reverse the damage to the ecosystem.
The Community Challengers project seeks to empower young people with tools to take and reflect on climate action and mobilise their communities with innovative and appealing measures. The project is based on a learning model that combines education, arts and social entrepreneurship, and thus targets both the intellectual and emotional level. The learning model draws on a 4-step methodology developed for this project: Learn, Analyse, Create, Advocate (LACA learning method). It enables young people to learn about climate change; analyse their community from the point of view of sustainability; create a vision for the future, combined with entrepreneurship tools, and take action. The model is developed by the Consortium of partners from Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Portugal and Serbia who have complementary expertise in the field of environmental education, youth empowerment, arts, advocacy and entrepreneurship. There are expert partners from Belgium and German and implementing partners from Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Portugal and Serbia who would test the model with young people and get their feedback.
The project is co-financed by the Erasmus+ KA2 Programme of the European Commission
