Building the Young Environmental Saviors

The "Youth and Civil Initiatives in the Rose Valley" NGO is the coordinator of this project. Our NGO was founded in 2007 and since then we have been implementing local, national and international youth projects and initiatives fostering active youth citizenship, volunteering , social inclusion of disadvantaged groups, gender equality, healthy lifestyle, sport and environmental awareness among local young people and citizens.

We manage the Youth Information Centre of Karlovo which is also a Eurodesk info point. Besides the different European projects we implement, every year we carry out local initiatives for Europe Day, Earth Day, International Youth Day, Tolerance and Volunteer's Day. We are also Move Agents and organise different sport events for European Move Week and European Week of Sport. We have implemented small-scale partnership projects in the field of sport about rural sport improvement and women engagement in sports and sport management. We are also actively working in the field of human rights education,prevention of hate speech and social exclusion.

Protecting the environment and raising the environmental awareness of young people are among our key priorities. Annually we organize clean-ups with local volunteers, eco-trips and other environmentally-friendly events for Earth Day, Water and Forest Days as we are situated at the foot of the “Central Balkan” National Park. Our first ever project under “Youth in Action” Programme in 2007 was “Young eco-heroes in action” winning second place for best youth exchange in Bulgaria. In 2021 we implemented a pilot activity project with the support of European Youth Foundation at the Council of Europe carrying out environmental activities in 7 local settlements after training 30 young eco-heroes. We would like to share our experience with environmental projects and initiatives with the partners in this project as well as to learn from them so we can enrich our activities and work together for combating climate change.

Mod of Life NGO was founded in 2010 by a group of young people enthusiastic by the ideas of freedom, democracy, efficiency, tolerance and dignity.

Our mission is to increase the involvement of young people in public life making them more active European and Romanian citizens. We are experienced in organising non-formal educational workshops, seminars, training courses and volunteering work related to different topics such as society development, self-expression, Art & Crafts, Video editing and film- making, conflict management, human rights, peace, nonviolence education, intercultural dialogue, and environmental issues.

Mod of Life has been involved in rural youth development through its Youth Eco-clubs and summer sport camps carried in partnership for several years with Mehedinti Youth and Sport Directorate.

We have also implemented projects promoting peace, intercultural dialogues and breaking stereotypes for different marginalised groups.

Since April 2019 Mod of Life has been involved in the national project Cu Apele Curate/With clean waters (www.cuapelecurate.ro) as local contact point for Mehedinti County.

The concrete and most easily measurable goal of the project was to reduce the amounts of plastic in the Danube river.

For the first year the project involved 10 regions of Romania bordering Danube river, on the second year the scope was expanded to the national level, and then, in the third year, we started promoting the project on international level.

Besides this big project the organisation is involved in different Erasmus+ partnership projects on the environmental topic.

The NGO was founded in 2017 with main aim to offer opportunities for personal and social development young people and adults in the areas of emotional skills, interpersonal relationships and learning skills in order to facilitate a better quality of life for all.

The main activities of the NGO include:

- seminars and experiential workshops for children, youth and adults for development of life skills

- training local and European youth workers, teachers and trainers on important professional development topics;

- cooperation with schools, local and regional organizations, groups and associations in Cyprus,

- cooperation with international educational groups and institutes;

- participation in international conferences, seminars and partnership projects for excahneg of best practices and knowhow on important global topics;

Our NGO has been partner in local and international environmental projects. We work a lot for promoting green mobility in our town especially bike riding as Limassol has perfect facilities for this with bike lanes along the whole coast. So we organise Car Free Day activities, "Bike to Work" Campaigns and partnership bike rides promoting our green mobility idea among local, national and international partners. We will organise partnership bike ride for this project as well during the study visit in Cyprus where we will also show partners the interesting and colourful eco-containers along the coastal lane installed by our Municipality to encourage people to throw their rubbish in those containers not in the Mediterranean sea or along the beach.

DELTA YOUTH is an NGO from Thessaloniki,Greece registered in 2017 with main aim to motivate active youth participation in local, national, European and international level through projects and youth-led initiatives. The NGO has been implementing youth exchanges, training courses and seminars on different topics such as:

- Combating unemployment levels (especially among young people).

- promotion of volunteering.

- promotion of use of new digital tools for youth work

- fostering youth talent and innovation.

- strengthening practices to combat social exclusion, promoting the common European values of social inclusion, enhancing intercultural understanding and sense of belonging to a community,

-raising environmental awareness of young people

- inclusion of disadvantaged and marginalised youth;

We have been partners in different environmental projects and then in 2021 we also hosted our youth exchange "Let's Care and Protect Our nature" for 30 young people from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and North Macedonia. We had environmental awareness sessions as well as eco-campaign in the campsite on Olympos beach cleaning the area giving real example to tourists how they should keep clean the environment. We also do campaigns to promote green mobility and eco-trips especially in the rural areas around Thessaloniki.

Our NGO is actively working to improve the opportunities for educational mobilities for the young people of our rural area as well as to foster their active youth citizenship and volunteering. We are also working in the field of human rights and gender equality education encouraging social inclusion for marginalised groups. In the last 3 years we have been actively involved in projects about interreligious dialogue as we have been coordinators in a KA2 project on this topc creating interesting educational toool - IRD board games through which the young people can learn about different religions and cultures in an interactive way.

We offer national and international Erasmus+ partnership training courses and seminars to the young people from Serbia so as to help them build capacity, gain new knowledge and skills on important global topics. We organise competitions, exhibitions and youth debates on important global topics.

On the environmental topic we have implemented local eco-campaigns promoting healthy lifestyle and walks among nature, clean-ups in the Goc mountains above Vrnjacka Banja , projects promoting the recycling and use of waste for social entrepreneurship ideas.

We have also organised youth debates about Climate Change and how young people can help stop the effects of global warrming and better care for the environment.

The "SAKURA" NGO was founded in 1990 with main principles to promote freedom, democracy and human rights among young people.

The main aim of the organization is to create programs for the benefit of disadvantaged young people, promoting active youth citizenship and volunteering.

We are implementing local, national and international projects for young people - youth exchanges, local youth initiatives,training courses and seminars on different topics. We are also sending, hosting and coordinating organisation for the EVS/now ESC programme hosting annually over 20 volunteers. Throughout the years we have implemented and partnered in many environmental projects - EVS , youth exchanges and seminars.

Our most current eco project is the partnership KA2 project "PLANETISE – Practical Learning for Action and Networking via an Educational Tool, Inspiring Study of Environment" under which we designed an interesting environmental awareness big street board game through which the young people really enjoy learning about environmental issues.We look forward to sharing this interesting innovative environmental educatioon tool with the partners in this project who haven't had the chance to see or try the game.