Open Your Mind

Context and needs

The young people we were working with in 2015 had ideas about the environment and their communities, but rarely put them into a form with objectives, resources and results. Ideas stayed ideas. We wanted to give them a setting in which to test them, criticise them constructively and turn them into plans, and to do this in an international group, where every assumption has to be explained.

Objectives

The project set out to develop the participants’ entrepreneurial spirit in relation to sustainable development, to introduce them to social entrepreneurship and the circular economy, to teach them how to structure an idea into an initiative with concrete steps, and to build links between young people from six countries.

Activities

Ten days at the Youth House in Timișoara. Idea development workshops and analysis of local problems related to the environment and responsible consumption, interactive sessions on social entrepreneurship and the circular economy, work in mixed-country teams with presentations and peer feedback, study visits and an intercultural evening.

Results and impact

Every team left with an outline of a local initiative, and every participant with a Youthpass certificate. The project laid the foundations of our cooperation with the partner organisations and was followed, the same year, by “Making growth sustainable”, which took the theme further.

Materials and resources

The full photo album of the project is published on our Facebook page.