Greece - HELLENIC YOUTH PARTICIPATION

Hellenic Youth Participation (based in Athens, Greece) stands for intercultural dialogue, non-formal education, mutual understanding and solidarity. One of the aims of the group is to promote the responsibility that young people have towards nature. We train different age groups (teenagers, young adults, parents and teachers) in order to inspire and stimulate their environmental awareness in their local and European community. We wish to motivate them to become involved and to raise awareness about local issues like sustainable living, sustainable mobility, recycling and consuming.

Through our projects we aim at the promotion of the respect towards every single thing through mindfulness and permaculture. HYP is active in a local, national and European level. We were recently awarded the silver prize in the volunteer competition for Greece for our contribution in education. The main activities of the organization are to organize trainings and sessions with young people through non-formal education techniques. HYP is an organization active in the field of environmental issues and every year we organize a three-day project about sustainability which is both held in the Greek islands. We have participated many times as partner organization in many Erasmus+ projects with environmental topics across Europe and then we multiply the effects of the projects using the knowledge that has been acquired from each project to the local community. We also organize self-financed local seminars with various topics such as the climate change, recycling, and sustainable development. A vast majority of our members are under 30 years of age and all our events are planned and run by and for young people. We mainly use non-formal education as an approach in order to motivate young people. The past two years we participated in international campaigns such as the “Let’s do it!” about cleaning beaches from thrash and “Climate Change-your problem” about climate change with the cooperation of the organization Youth and Environment Europe (YEE). At the moment we are working on a European Initiative in order to promote the issues of sustainable mobility and climate change in schools. We realize seminars and workshops in Athens about responsible attitude to transportation and the promotion of cycling Our connection with environment (and of course with the program SOESOS) is coming through multiple activities that we are taking part. As you can see from the activities that we mentioned a lot of programs that we took part are associated with environment. Also people that they are going to work in the project worked a lot in programs with Non Formal Environmental methods The staff that is involved in this project is fully trained in non-formal education and has a lot of experience in the field. Our organisation makes sure to fully equip the people and constantly trained. Some of our key competences in organizational support are:

* select participants that correspond to the requirements of the project

* provide teambuilding activities for the participants before project, and evaluation meeting after the completion of the project;

* ensure that all administrative issues related to the project are dealt with promptly and appropriately;

*provide assistance to participants in regard to any other necessary or helpful preparations for travel and the project;

* organize a follow-up seminar in the local community with the participants;

* evaluate the project;

* assist with the design, compilation, transmission, and maintenance of any media related to the project; and,

* disseminate the results on the media relevant to the project In terms of environment, we collaborate with environmentalists and urbanists.

We also involve local groups of activism for animal rights and sustainable consumption of food and goods, in order to make sure that our organisation is always up to date and provide responsible information to our teams.