Global Playground Stockholm has taken part in the first international activity of the Erasmus+ funded project “Green in Everyday Life”,a training course on Green Homes program held in CENEAM (National Environmental Education Center of Spain) coordinated by the Spanish organisation Columbares Association.
During the course, from 30th of May to 5th of June, Aleh Kliatsko and our new volunteers Juan Mauritz and Marcus Hjalmarsson and 11 other participants from organisations from Italy, UK, Morocco, Jordan received special training to implement Green Homes in our countries.
The team of educators from Columbares Association and CENEAM explained to us the methodological basis of Green Homes program and gave us specific educational tools on climate change, energy and water saving, efficient waste management and responsible consumption. Each country also worked to adapt the methodology of Green Homes program to the local circumstances and the target group, designing domestic savings kits, choosing topics for workshops and planning the evaluation of the results. After the training we confirmed that we feel prepared and motivated to implement the program in Sweden.
We are now a part of expanding the program internationally and creating a working group to exchange experiences that will enrich all participating institutions and will help to reduce the human ecological footprint.
We have started to implement the Green Homes Program in Stockholm, Sweden and are now looking for households within the Stockholm area which want to be a part of the project, participate in workshops and receive a domestic savings kit.
"Green in Everyday Life": how the project runs in Stockholm?
Project Green in Everyday Life pics up the speed, having in focus improvement of every day household quality of young Stockholm’s citizens. International project, funded by Erasmus plus, gathered representatives not only from Europe but also from its neighborhood. Thus, apart from Swedish NGO Global Playground Stockholm, the participants come from English organization “Insiders Access”, Moroccan organization “Basin Guir”, Spanish organizations “Columbares” and “Ceneam” and Italian organization “Consorcio ABN”.
The key idea of the project is to introduce how we can live smart and sustainable life starting already from household in our homes. This aim has NGO Global Playground Stockholm while working with young families who want to improve the smart way of their energy consumption, get more knowledge about recycling, environmental friendly concepts, green food and healthy lifestyle.
Thus there were a number of various workshops conducted in Stockholm and gathered young people who are not indifferent to such up-to-date issues as reducing carbon dioxide emissions, using bicycles instead of cars, promotion of urban gardening and using smart food. A movie “Cars vs. bikes”, presentations on how to make your home energy efficient and research project at the Royal Institute of Technology about usage of new concept of Twizy cars in big cities led to interesting discussions where project’s participants and guests could exchange their ideas and international experiences.
Transnational meeting at the end of November 2015 in Stockholm gathered all five countries together for a hub weekend of intensive work, brainstorming and ideas sharing. Each country presented its current results and how they apply ideas of “Green in Everyday Life” into practice. Each organization in every participating country has its own focus groups. Thereby organization from the United Kingdom has focus on prisoners, Moroccan and Italian organizations work with schools, organization from Spain has in focus groups at risk of social exclusion and Swedish NGO works with young people with focus on households.
Groundwork of all participants who got together for a one intensive weekend in Stockholm continues to bring its outcomes for respective focus groups. For example according to results gained by “Insiders Access” from the United Kingdom, one of the participants who has been discharged from prison, expressed a wish to start education within area of sustainable development. Participants of “Green in Everyday Life” in Sweden developed ideas for future projects within sustainable area.
“The Future of Food”was one of the recent events, visited by “Green in Everyday Life” team and participants. Such well-renowned names as companies Plantagon and Seafarm presented their innovative concepts on urban agriculture, triple- helix approach to connect universities, cities and companies, high-tech urban food systems and agritechture which embraces agriculture, technology and architecture. Besides, a company Qvicket from Stockholm presented an idea about manufacture of bread from insects and at the end of the event all interested guests were given a unique opportunity to taste newly baked brown insects’ bread.
creation of a personal "sustainable kit" for every project’s participant, taking to consideration a primary questionnaire, conducted at the project’s beginning. Such kit is made up according to the needs of each participant and which can be applied in her or his household.
The key condition is to find things which will help you to save or reduce consumption of energy in the household. Thus, water saving shower head, plastic film insulation to weatherize windows, LED lamps and recycling bins became the most required in households of Stockholmers- participants of the project.
The final transnational meeting toke place in June 2016 in Spainwhere organizations “Columbares” and “Ceneam” will introduce their final project’s results along with Italian, Swedish, Moroccan and English organizations.
Even though the project slowly approach its end, it will without a doubt be a beginning of new future projects which will unite all who want to live a smart life.
Photo credits and text by Iryna Mikhnovets, Communication Director of Global Playground Stockholm