We4Change aims to contribute to the EU Youth Strategy by engaging, connecting and empowering young people with skills and confidence to contribute to prosperous, cohesive and sustainable societies. Specifically by adopting a gender specific approach, the We4Change project is concentrated on empowering girls and young women (aged 15-25) from disadvantaged backgrounds and supporting them to build their confidence, develop digital and innovation skills, increase civic engagement and unlock their changemaking potential from a young age. Responding directly to the needs of girls and young women to break down stereotypes, develop their creativity and confidence and contribute to society, the project will offer an innovative combination of hands-on activities, training on digital, innovation and environmental awareness skills, problem-solving and co-creation of prototypes to address climate change and drive environmental transformation. In this respect, during the We4Change project the following activities, outputs and results are foreseen: 1. The project will develop the We4Change Changemakers Event Curriculum, that will offer the basis for organising and facilitating 15 Changemakers events in 5 European countries whereby more than 200 socioeconomically disadvantaged girls and young women will be provided with the skills, resources, inspiration and confidence to collectively design projects that address climate change. 2. We will create the We4Change “Train the Trainers” Programme and train and enable more than 50 youth workers and trainers to deliver effectively the We4Change events.3. We will develop the We4Change “Train the Mentors” Programme offering a training package for adult women who will be involved in the project to provide mentoring, coaching and role models for girls and young women from disadvantaged backgrounds. We expect to train and engage more than 50 women mentors.4. Our team will create and promote 40 Inspirational videos showcasing how young girls and women from disadvantaged backgrounds are leading positive change in their communities.5. Finally, the project will develop the We4Change community platform that will act as a unique reference point for engaging girls and women from any background to raise their voice on climate change and to collectively innovate to deliver a sustainable future.

Global Climate change is here and its impacts on people and resources are expected to intensify in the near future. If we do not act now against climate change, global temperatures are expected to increase 4°C or more by the time today’s teenagers reach their 80s. Relevant announcements include the Commission’s European Green Deal that urges towards the creation of a new European Competence Framework on climate change and sustainable development; the Paris Agreement which highlights the importance of climate change education and the UN climate regime which urges upon the development of educational and training programmes on climate change. According to UNESCO (n.d.), education is a critical element of the international response to climate change having a more than ever critical role to play in developing a generation capable of boosting green growth.Even though a great number of schools around the world have already started to tackle the difficult issue of climate change in classrooms, these attempts are still very immature and mainly focus on teaching facts on how the planet is changing. Of course, knowing the reasoning and impacts of climate change is of great importance but is only one aspect of climate change education. Today’s students will be dealing with tomorrow’s climate change consequences and, therefore, schools need to be at the forefront of preparing them with the relevant skills for developing climate change solutions. An effective educational approach shall be put in place endeavouring to foster greater engagement across disciplines and embed climate change in different school subjects with a particular focus on the social dimensions of climate change.STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION project comes as a response to all the above since it seeks to strengthen the capacity of primary and secondary education to provide quality climate change education by introducing an innovative climate change-related curriculum that integrates the educational approaches of environmental activism, civil discourse, project-based learning and gamification. In this line of reasoning, this project aims at:1) developing an innovative curriculum for primary and secondary education students with the aim to increase their awareness about climate change and enable them to develop transversal and green-related skills.2) offering students highly engaging gaming experiences around the issue of climate change through the STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION board game that shall be created.3) developing a training program for educators to enable them to apply the STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION curriculum while simultaneously further advancing their professional development in youth and environmental activism pedagogies and in the effective use of civil discourse in the classroom. 4) promoting a culture of social mindfulness and responsibility regarding climate change since the earlier students are educated about environmental issues, the more sustainable their behaviors will become. The STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION project is comprised of 2 primary schools seeking to integrate environmental and climate change practices in their settings, 2 research organisations competent on the development of innovative teaching and learning practices in schools, an environmental NGO active on lobbying and environmental awareness-raising and one academic partner competent on the field of sustainable development, environmental protection and climate change. STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION shall have a distinct impact on young children’s awareness and attitudes towards social action and responsibility and public participation. The program aims at facilitating teachers educating students about the value of voluntarism and cooperation with other members of the community in order to find collective solutions to the problem of climate change and environmental degradation.Through the STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION program young learners will develop important social and environmental activist skills that can inspire more active and responsible civic identities, while teachers will be facilitated to include civic education elements in their existing curricula. Finally, the STUDENTS IN CLIMATE ACTION project will have an impact on the formation of social and environmentally responsible attitudes and behaviours which are closely related to climate change issues.Climate change constitutes a significant problem within the wider spectrum of environmental concerns. It is anticipated that through our program all participants will not only become aware of climate change, but they will also become motivated to act productively for its prevention and reduction.

<< Objectives >>SEgoesGreen aims at supporting Social Economy (SE) university faculties to integrate teaching on sustainability within their courses by exploiting the educational potential of Nature Based Solutions (NBS). To this end, the project aims to offer flexible training tools and resources for SE educators and equip them with competences for integrating innovative pedagogies powered by NBS so as to fully exploit the transformative potential of Social Economy for a green transition.<< Implementation >>- Develop a study offering new knowledge and deep understanding for integrating eco-citizenship powered by NBS in SE faculties. - Develop a Blended Training Programme and train SE university teachers through a hackathon inspired seminar and a MOOC.- Develop the Green-SE curriculum and deliver innovative competence based, and challenge-based learning activities, powered by NBS, to students of SE departments. -Demonstrate and promote the educational potential of NBS within the SE sector.<< Results >>SE educators will develop their understanding, increase their confidence and skills to integrate innovative sustainability education powered by NBS in their courses. Students in SE studies will build skills to drive sustainable change by harnessing NBS and foster behavioural transformation towards eco-citizenship. Policy makers will be reached through evidence-based recommendations to drive future policy developments for integrating NBS in SE faculties.

The COESO (Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues) project facilitates and supports participatory research in SSH, through a service-first approach. COESO supports ten Citizen Science pilots presenting a variety of disciplines, societal challenges and types of engagement with citizens in different European countries. COESO project will specifically support collaborative practices in Citizen Science by developing a Virtual Ecosystem for Research Activation (VERA), a platform envisioned as a "collaboratory” providing a set of tools to discover potential partners, to define and co-design the activities, to co-create new knowledge and solutions, and to deliver them to society. COESO will furthermore collaborate with research funding organizations to enhance financial support to Citizen Science projects in the SSH and explore the frontiers of innovation in SSH public engagement by achieving a complete mutual learning with the teams involved in the Pilots. Finally, “Cooperation analytics” will be designed to measure the quality of collaboration between researchers and citizens in VERA. Those analytics will be useful to the project teams themselves but they will also be a major contribution to funders, policy makers, research organizations and other stakeholders supporting Citizen Science policies. COESO’s overall objective is to overcome the obstacles that hinder the development of Citizen Science in the SSH. COESO will enable a dramatic growth of Citizen Science projects in these disciplines and will intensify the collaborations between SSH researchers and citizens to tackle together the many societal challenges European societies face today. VERA will be one of the core services offered by OPERAS Research Infrastructure to the scientific community.