EU-WISE Young Citizens Project

 

The EU-WISE Young Citizens Project is an Erasmus+ project that has started in December 2020 and will last two years.

Coordinated by the Youth Association from Transylvania, this pan-European project is led together with 4 partner organizations, namely Equo Garantito from Italy, the Polish Fair Trade Association from Poland, Project School from Italy and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office in Belgium.

The main purpose of this project is to build civic and environmental awareness, involve and empower youth and especially young people with less opportunities, in promoting responsible consumption and the overall Sustainable Development Goals. By doing so, greater emphasis will be put on Fair Trade and the Slow Food movement.

The project aims to boost the acquisition of social and civic competences, understanding of values and fundamental rights by young people. To this end, the project will provide them with various opportunities to take part in debates and activities around sustainable consumption issues.

Along this journey, the FTAO will gather good practices on how Civil Society Organisations, local authorities, and other stakeholders can support at their level Youth engagement on sustainable consumption and production.

The FTAO will also play a key role in the uptake and upscale of good practices identified by the project and ensure that EU policymakers are aware of the project and will duly consider its policy recommendations.

The FTAO strives to support the role of young people as active actors of change. Our aim is to find synergies between Fair Trade actors working with young people and give them the needed tools to improve and uptake Youth-led advocacy to a new level. 

News Section

A Practical Guide to Train and Empower Youth to be Advocates of Sustainable Production and Consumption EU-WISE Toolkit including Policy Recommendations is out!

This toolkit is an initiative of the partners of the EU-WISE: Young Citizens Consumers project, it aims to present our project and to highlight two different phases of the project. One phase consisted in carrying out training courses for young people, called Youth Leaders in the four different countries (50 hours), another, in having these Youth Leaders participate and carry out local activities (education, advocacy, awareness raising, communication etc.), called Pilot Actions.

The toolkit presents the methods applied, SWOT analysis, evaluations, lessons learned and policy recommendations gathered during these two phases of the project.

It also has feedback and content from more than 20 CSOs who were not directly part of this project but who attended a workshop in Brussels that analysed the EU-WISE project results through this Toolkit and who have shared from their own experiences, expertise and recommendations.

The toolkit is designed to allow you -whether you are an NGO or a civil society organisation- to be inspired to either create trainings and Pilot Actions with young people or to improve your existing practices.

The Policy Recommendations are for decision makers to take into consideration in their policies connected to sustainable production and consumption.

Check out our new video on the EU-Wise project, which presents our aims of raising awareness about sustainable consumption patterns and empowering young Europeans as agent of change.

The EU-Wise report entitled “25 Good Practices – empowering young people in the field of sustainable consumption and Fair Trade” is out! The publication is based on a selection of good practices collected in the respective countries of the EU-WISE project Partners, showing the dynamism and creativity of multiple networks, NGOs, and institutions to attract and inspire young people to become agents of change. The general aim of this publication is to create a common database that will help prepare local pilot actions to empower Youth. You can read the report here.

“How do we make the EU’s trade policies fair?” Students meet MEPs to ask how to make EU trade work for people and planet. “We should make Europe the first Fair Trade continent.” Is this possible? How fair is EU trade anyway? On the 30th of June, a group of students had the chance to quiz four Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in an online discussion on the future of trade in Europe. Read more about it here.

Events

  • International Fair Trade Towns Conference (18-20 November 2021): This annual international virtual conference was organised by Swiss Fair Trade and Fair Trade Towns International. Didier Reynaud presented the EU Wise project during the Workflow on Youth Engagement. You can have a look at the recording here. Some young fair trade advocates took part in the Youth Panel and they discussed their own engagement and that of their generation. You can watch the recording here.
  • Visit from participants in the programme “Young experts for Fairtrade” (18 October 2021), organised by the German organisation BDKJ (Bund der deutschen katholischen Jugend). Charlotte Vernier explained how the Fair Trade movement works and the role of the FTAO. Didier Reynaud presented the programme “Young Fair Trade Advocates”.
  • Training of Fair Trade Advocates- Fair Trade Principles and consumer rights in the Philippines (8 October 2021). Didier Reynaud presented a video on the history of Fair Trade made by Raphael Altmann that will be made public in January 2022.  He had an open discussion with around 30 young Filipinos on the history of Fair Trade and the role of the FTAO in Brussels.
  • Sergi Corbalán, Executive Director, explained the advocacy work of the FTAO at the training course led by our EU Wise partner Equo Garantito September 2021.
  • Fabian Richter, Policy and Project Officer, presented the advocacy work of the FTAO at the training course of our EU Wise partner Youth Association of Transylvania’s in November 2021.

Watch this space to learn about our latest programme called Young Fair Trade Advocates!