Climate change, global warming, biodiversity…are themes that continue to change over this century and beyond. It is obvious that human activities are making weather much worse from rainstorms, floods to intensive heat.

The Youth Green Deal project is delving into this theme of climate change after the participants of an SCI MIDI seminar in Catalonia in 2019 identified this topic as crucial for the Mediterranean area. Organisations from both sides of the Mediterranean area wanted to put all their expertise together to improve and promote environmental workcamps as a tool to support climate change mitigation and regenerate biodiversity. Together they want to develop an eco-volunteering model that can inspire other organisations and build the organisations skills of all involved. 

Consequently, the project is made up of Steering Team Meetings, training and eco-camps. Among the objectives of the YGD project is youth empowerment and raising awareness on environmental issues.

The drastic environmental situation in the involved countries is somehow alarming, the VSFr Tunisia as the applicant organisation and its partners: SCICatalonia, CCIVS, SCI Belgium, SCI France, SCI Italy, EVO Morocco, Space SD and Alshmoh Cultural Center Palestine have started to implement this project through the 1st Steering Team Meeting in Tunisia from the 10th to the 15th of December in which all partners have set a clear vision and divided tasks among the partners. A clear project calendar was made showing all the project activities ain the coming 18 months. Besides all this practical matters the project partners also discussed the impact research which is supposed to be linked to the project and did some field visits to local partners of VSFr to understand the local context and to get to know some local attempts to preserve the environment. Now, all are looking forward to the 1st upcoming activity; the training on eco-volunteering and youth leadership in Tunisia in March. The training brings together 22 local, national and international participants. 2 more trainings are foreseen to train the youth leaders in visual storytelling (Belgium) and bio-construction (Jordan). Over summer 80 young people will participate in 4 youth exchanges in Morocco, Tunesia, Palestine and Catalonia.

Thank you to VSFr Tunisia from MIDI working group for submitting this article.