Building eco-literacy: preparing European young people for the green labour market

According to the European Commission: ‘It is easy to consider green jobs as the preserve of eco-industries. After all, employment in this sector has grown by 20 % since 2000 and now provides 4.2 million jobs . But the growing importance of sustainability has reached all sectors. Many industries have realised that investing in resource efficiency, energy efficiency, renewable energy, waste and water management actually saves them money by being less reliant on primary materials and imports.’

In order to be prepared to fulfill the demanding duties of a green job, it’s not only technical and scientific knowledge that is needed, but also ecoliteracy, eco-consciousness, creativity, and many other traits and competences which are not taught or trained in formal education institutions. This leaves young people unprepared to fulfill the requirements needed for the growing green labour sector.

Our project aims to fill this gap.

Objectives:

- To train 30 youth professionals (youth workers, trainers, youth leaders and youth policy makers, young people active in the green issues, students) on guiding the youth they work with along their employability path, with a special focus on those competences that they will need to acquire for fulfilling the requirements of the growing green labour market;

- to analyse the current trends of the labour market and explore the new competences that will be needed to cover the demands of the future job market;

- to provide participants with a wider understanding of the ecological systems and raise awareness of the urge for preparing young generations for future challenges;

- to promote youth work and non-formal education as tools to develop the competences that young people will need in the future labour market;

- to provide youth professionals and young people with methods and tools in order to be able to improve young  employability and inspiration;

- to create a network of youth professionals having specific interest and motivation on further cooperating on initiatives connected with the green labour market.

Contents: Trends of the job market, Future work competences, Ecoliteracy and eco-competences, How to get ready for the future job market, Awareness and Mindfulness, Emotional intelligence, Systems thinking, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Virtual Collaboration, Tools and methods for youth work, Personal action plan, Reality transfer...

Methods: We will use a combination of formal and non-formal learning methods, the non-formal ones representing around 90% of the total. The methodologies that we will apply will require a high involvement of participants.

It will be experiential learning, as well, meaning that the participants will experience themselves some of the methodologies and techniques that they then will be able to apply with the young people they work with.

We have planned enough reflection time for the learnings to sink in, as well as feedback time for the trainers to be able to adapt the programme to the participants needs as required.