The KA2 Erasmus+ project, EmpactPreneuriat, seeks to assess the impact & influence of EU youth (young people and youth work organizations) in the community building process, the attainment of SDGs and overall the creation of sustainable communities through youth participation & entrepreneurship.
Our observations based on our youth work organizations’ projects in Europe; most specifically in Estonia, France, Romania and Greece (the 4 countries partners of this project) show that most youth work organizations are actively engaged on various topics that seek to empower their youth in different socio-economic spheres (per the ERASMUS+ Programme guide). Through our investigations and observations, we posit that young people over the years have been pioneers of change and we think that if well-skilled, EU youth can contribute to the creation of sustainable communities through impact-oriented activities & projects. As young people and youth workers, we feel the need to be catalysts of change who will raise awareness on issues related to sustainability, environmental protection & youth participation. This project is for us an opportunity to innovate new project design tools that put project-impact awareness at their core (community impact, environmental impact, youth participation). To do this we intend to build upon existing good practices in relation to this topic from different socio-cultural settings in Europe.
As objectives, our project seeks to:
O1. Inform European youth on the impact of their activities over the community. This will be done through the production of an impact report (IO1) on the various forms of youth-led entrepreneurship, projects and their contribution to the attainment of SDGs, community building as well as youth participation.
O2. Promote the exchange of good practices within European youth as related to SDGs, environmental protection and community development and trigger a youth-led campaign, using a bottom-up approach where young people & youth workers will be pioneers of change that will design and implement projects & entrepreneurial initiatives that will have a positive impact on their immediate environment & communities. This will be done through the creation of a digital guide (IO2) on sustainable project management in youth work & SDGs’ reinforcement at European local levels.
O3. Capacitate at least 100 EU youth workers to embed sustainability & environmental protection education into their youth work. Following the ETS competence model, this would train them on how to sensitize their young people on the impact of their activities, projects and enterprises. Also, this will help the youth workers educate the youth on community development as well as SDGs in order for those concepts to be considered by local youth in their various endeavours.
O4. Promote a common understanding of the concept of environmental impact as related to youth work & youth-led projects (community projects, entrepreneurial ventures, etc.) As mentioned, the project will produce 2 intellectual outputs the objective that will contribute to the attainment of our objectives
Our target groups are:
TG1: youth workers & young people active in community development, project management as well as youth educators from EU
TG2: young entrepreneurs & freelancers from EU
TG3: young people aged 16-30y old from the EU, mainly youth from rural areas with internet access