REAL DEAL will stimulate a pan-European debate to reshape citizens? and stakeholders? active participation through deliberative processes around the European Green Deal. It brings together researchers and practitioners of deliberative democracy from a wide range of disciplines including environmental rights and the law of public participation, ethics and responsible innovation, gender studies and ecofeminism, psychology, geography, urban planning and sustainability studies. It includes the EU?s largest civil society networks advocating on the environment, climate, sustainable development, local democracy and the European movement. It teams up with youth climate, social justice and women?s organisations, SMEs, universities and research institutes, mobilising networks with thousands of CSOs, uniting millions of citizens and activating contacts to thousands of policymakers. In a large co-creation exercise, REAL DEAL will develop, test and validate innovative tools and formats to propel deliberative democracy to the next level. It will tests its innovations at citizens assemblies for the transition in at least 13 countries. We will scrutinise pan-European formats ranging from digital deliberation through our online platform www.CitizensGreenDeal.eu to in-person processes such as an Assembly for a Gender-Just Green Deal and a pan-European Youth Climate Assembly. REAL DEAL will co-create a comprehensive protocol for meaningful citizens? participation and deliberation to work towards the objectives of the EGD. It will validate recommendations on how to design such processes and how they can be applied by European institutions, Member States and civil society alike. Gender equality will be embedded into the project?s DNA. It pays specific attention to the leave-no-one-behind principle, fostering the engagement of disenfranchised groups that are disproportionally burdened by environmental damage. REAL DEAL will develop a new model of environmental citizenship across Europe.

"The S.W.I.T.C.H. (Sustainability and Waste: Innovation, Training and Community Hub) is a social and ecological entrepreneurship project for young project leaders and young NEETs. It combines creativity with social innovation to meet the environmental challenges of our time.This project is led by a consortium of European actors with the aim of bringing together cultures and varied skills around two contextual axes:- An environmental crisis: production of waste, depletion of resources, record ecological footprint. The population is in excess of consumption and does not have the right reflexes, in particular, the possible use or reuse of bulky waste and waste resulting from economic activity.- A social crisis: economic crisis, growing unemployment, increasingly marked inequalities, loss of meaning for certain young audiences at risk of exclusion. These young people are in search of meaning and have fewer opportunities for social, civic and professional education, in a society paradoxically based on overconsumption and a ""throw-away” culture.Social and professional insecurity makes it necessary to offer activities and projects linked to themes that create values for young people, relative to the social economy.That is why SWITCH aims to reconcile these vulnerable categories through participation in this social and environmental entrepreneurship project as part of transnational cooperation in order to aggregate our different perspectives.The European and intercultural context is fundamental because it fits in with the borderless economic model on the one hand, and the transcultural model on the other. Nowadays, no economic innovation can be thought of without taking into account the European and especially the global context. We want to develop “glocal” work. Think global, transnational cooperation and act local, integrate eco-projects into a local dynamic.At the end of this experience, young people will develop skills in terms of project management, innovation, creation and communication while participating in European citizenship.3 intellectual productions will be carried out:• A module for the creation of an online MOOC-type platform highlighting the positive externalities of upcycling, intended to be a reference site for reuse centers and the general public. It will centralize information for both partners and the general public. Ultimately, it will be a regularly updated resource space with dynamic and digital data so that each visitor has access to information that may be useful to them.• A action-training module for social and environmental entrepreneurship: supported by professionals in the creation of eco-projects in the form of dynamic learning. It aims to train young project leaders in the spirit and realization of social entrepreneurship. The economy and creation around waste will be used as a working medium. Following the example of the values carried by the partners, the matrix of this module will highlight new forms of ethical and collaborative management.• A project marathon where young NEETs and young project leaders will work together to present their projects or the result of their work to a jury of professionals, officials, and the public. This intellectual production aims to train young people in verbal and non-verbal language. At the end, the young people will be able to express themselves orally, pitch a project and ""sell"" themselves like in a professional interview.The consortium will aim to improve the creative, organizational and digital skills of the young people targeted through eco-citizen approaches allowing them to act directly on their own waste consumption, within a sustainable development approach. The main objectives will be to:- understand the structural issues of our consumer society, in particular the modes of production at the origin of overconsumption and the notion of externalities- support the eco-entrepreneurial spirit of young people- raise awareness of new green employment sectors and the range of trades relating to crafts, decoration, design, etc.- foster a transnational dynamic of young people, taking ""waste"" as a medium present to all societies.- allow participants to rediscover a positive image of themselves through creativity, involvement in an open and collaborative project with other young people from different backgrounds.Project promoter :ATELIER D’éco SOLIDAIRE, Francehttps://atelierdecosolidaire.com/Partners :IFRASS, Francehttps://www.ifrass.fr/TRINIJOVE, Spainhttp://trinijove.org/YOUTH AND ENVIRONMENT EUROPE, Czech Republichttps://yeenet.eu/"

The overall objective of the project is to develop and pilot test a cloud eParticipation SaaS platform, (available as a mobile application and through a web platform) enhanced with web / social media mining, gamification, machine translation, and visualisation features, which will promote the societal and political participation of young people in the decision-making process on environmental issues. The project will employ innovative social media analytics and monitoring tools, as part of effective strategies that will be developed, in order to engage young citizens in the pilot activities and increase their motivation to participate. Four pilots in an operational environment have been selected for the deployment of STEP solution in 4 locations: Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, with the participation of one regional authority, 3 municipalities, and an association of municipalities. The pilots are expected to involve testing by 8.200 young users and 85 policy makers. 65 decision-making procedures with an impact on the environment are expected to be tested. The project will assess the usability, effectiveness and impact of the STEP service project in embedding open engagement in public sector processes, and will identify the key barriers for wide scale deployment. Dissemination activities specifically designed for the needs of young people and policy makers will be employed. A business strategy will be developed for the wide take-up of the integrated STEP platform and its reusable components, individually, or in combinations. The potential for scalability and adaptation to other regions will be assessed, and organisations that can be involved in the wide deployment of the platform and its components will be approached.

The project “ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE ACCEPTED” took place from June 1, 2016 to November 30, 2017 in five countries – Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Portugal. The aim of the project was to explore innovative approaches for development of youth active citizenship by fostering youth ability to convince stakeholders of the need to implement their proposed solutions for environmental protection. As a result, four groups of young people addressed local environmental problems cooperating with local stakeholders. Based on real problem solving approach, the best ways to improve the quality of civic participation of young people were sought. Meanwhile an international youth contest was organized, which brought together examples of good practice on how young Europeans have come up with concrete solutions to solve local environmental problems. During the project 3 international meetings were held in order to discuss the progress of the project and to exchange examples of good practice in the field of youth civic participation. Diverse combination of partners was established – it included two youth environmental organizations and two classical national-level environmental organizations. Additionally, the fifth partner was international level youth environmental organization. The project provided an opportunity to compare and to exchange good practices in order to improve the work of each organization. The project had a significant positive impact on 27 directly involved young people. Young people in practice had to go through a full cycle of civic participation, starting with problem identification, defending the need for problem solving to other stakeholders, attracting the relevant resources, implementing activities and delivering results to partners, as well as reporting on the results achieved. Such practical work based on real not theoretical problems allows young people to acquire skills necessary for real life - to take the initiative themselves and to be responsible for results of their work. Within the project, group of experts developed video guide for European youth environmental organizations in order to present achieved results in an attractive, engaging and innovative way to their target groups - donors, municipalities, state institutions.