Abstract:

Current research underscores the urgent need to address climate change, a significant threat to ecosystems, biodiversity, and human well-being. Environmental crises like deforestation, pollution, and natural disasters necessitate equipping youth workers with tools to engage young people in tackling these issues. Young people, although vulnerable, are powerful agents of change.

Supported by the Erasmus+ program, the Youth Empowerment Kit (YEK) project aims to empower youth workers, especially in disadvantaged areas, by providing good practices, training, and evidence-informed resources with practical implementation instructions and impact evaluation standards to enhance youth interventions. The project aligns with Erasmus+ priorities of promoting civic engagement, improving the quality of youth work, and combating climate change, and its consortium comprises youth organizations, a foundation, an EdTech company, and a training and research organization from the Netherlands, Romania, and Greece.

This paper presents the main results of the YEK project, including the YEK handbook and the YEK training on "building resilience against climate change" for youth workers. The handbook is divided into three parts: the first part showcases innovative practices from project partners, designed to build climate change resilience among youth through creative and inclusive methods. The second part provides evidence-based resources and practical activities to help youth workers apply climate change resilience strategies in their work. The final section offers evaluation standards to assess the success of youth interventions, ensuring continuous improvement and accountability. Overall, the handbook aims to inspire, equip, and guide youth workers in fostering effective and inclusive youth development.

The YEK training covers key concepts such as permaculture and its role in climate change resilience, understanding resilience and human attitudes towards climate change, and the victim-accountability chart with a systemic perspective on resilience. It includes a study guide, several open access learning resources, an online lecture from a permaculture expert, the YEK podcast with audio files summarizing the main contents of the training, and various learning activities. Participants who complete the training and submit the learning activities earn a certificate of completion, enhancing their capacity to address climate change and build resilience in youth.

To ensure the outputs align with the needs of youth workers, consortium partners collaborated closely with them during the design and development stages. This participatory approach highlights the project's dedication to addressing real-life challenges faced by youth workers. The project results aim to improve the effectiveness of youth work and foster the growth of young citizens who actively contribute to their communities and society at large.

Keywords:

Youth work, Erasmus+, climate change, resilience, youth empowerment kit.