EUTEENS4GREEN Projects
#EUTEENS4GREEN Awarded Beneficiaries
Festival por la Energía Comunitaria
- 💡 Description
- Teruel is facing the negative effects of the clean energy transition. This project wants to organize an event in order to bond between social and climate justice groups while we raise awareness about these issues. The activity they are developing would consist of an event organized by the local grassroots movements from Teruel (Aragón, Spain). All of them would be movements that stand for climate justice but each one focused on a more concrete topic regarding vulnerable collectives: women, disabled people, migrant people, children etc. It would be an event organized by young people for young people, and the local community even though everyone is welcome and can enjoy it. This project will be led by the young group from Friends of Earth Aragón (Amigos de la Tierra Aragón). The depopulated rural areas in Spain are one of the most affected by climate change. Even if the balance is positive, the green transition has a lot of negative consequences in the rural depopulated areas. Transition measures mostly focus on the cities. Rural areas of Teruel are facing the deeply negative consequences of the clean energy transition. Green energy macro projects are being implemented in these territories impacting the landscapes, fertile lands, water, previous jobs, air quality and biodiversity. Affected people are usually non-concerned about this issue and, when they are, they normally feel as if they do not have enough resources to face the consequences. In addition to this, the leisure offer for young people in Spain, especially in rural areas, is not wide. Rural areas do not offer educational, recreational and ecological alternatives. Leisure here tends to be unhealthy, unsafe and environmentally harmful. This situation got even worse with the arrival of the Covid-19 impact. For example, many activists in our groups have shown signs of extenuation, burnout, depression and anxiety. This is certainly related to the social and ecological situation marginalized people have to deal with. Activism for climate justice gets even harder when people cannot find ways to enjoy themselves with peers or to get in contact with people who are fighting similar or the same struggles. The project wants to bring an enjoyable face-to-face safe event in which we can learn and bond between social and climate justice groups while they raise awareness about the issues the area is dealing with such as the impact of the green transition. The project will work with the local community in order to organize a green festival with different workshops, a handicraft and ecological market, ecological and vegan food service (which is impossible to find in regular festivals in Spain) and of course music concerts of local independent bands and singers. The whole event will be completely zero waste. It is important for us to show the world we can make enjoyable events and activities with little or zero environmental damage. If it is possible, they would like to plan a disco soup with a local association. The idea is to safely organize a popular lunch with food that otherwise would be wasted because it is not beautiful, normal-shaped or coloured enough. The workshops will focus on intersectionality: mental health and activism, zero waste communities, gender, disability and racial justice in climate movements… Activists and writers from different parts of Spain will come to present books, guide workshops, give lectures… They will have a Sign Language interpreter for all the activities. It will be an opportunity to meet each other, learn and reduce the impact of the negative effects of the green transition. For this to be possible, the project will spend months working directly with the young people of their Youth Association (Friends of Earth Spain) and from the communities affected by the green transition. They will have monthly meetings in which they will decide together what, when and how they want to educate themselves on environmental and social issues. They will implement then these training and workshops to learn more about the topics we decide on (community energy, food sovereignty, equality…). Volunteers will travel to the affected rural areas to meet and speak with the local people. They will host a bigger meeting two months before the main activity (the festival) in order to organize it together with the grassroots young movements, the local community and our young volunteers. Finally, the project will work on a social media campaign with the results of our process.
- 🎯 Target Group
- 🌱 Expected Results
- The project will meet the needs of the young population of the area: lack of community leisure spaces and healthy, safe and environmentally friendly socialization; need for alternatives closer to the experience of young people to address mental health problems and emotional management to the exclusive use of psychotropic drugs; absence of horizontal and democratic youth movements and associations; decrease in youth participation in associations; need to recover support networks; need to create egalitarian, accessible and open spaces. Some cultural and leisure activities bring economic benefits to rural areas. They are those which, like ours, are organized with the purpose of attracting more people to the area, and not only as an initiative for the inhabitants of the village or municipality. This project aims to transcend the usual music circuits to get closer to the local population and their heritage through workshops, organic markets run by local producers or different craft markets already explained. They expect to have periodic meetings with the local grassroots movements and with the local community. They will mentor these groups and guarantee they receive the help and education needed about climate transition while we build together the main activity (Community Energy Festival). The estimated number of attendees of the festival is about 1,500 people. In order to measure the expected results and the process carried out, some of the instruments they intend to use are: - The elaboration of activity record sheets and a follow-up report in order to compile all the information obtained and strengthen the network developed. - Evaluation of the participation by means of a questionnaire and a self-evaluation process to guarantee the improvement of the different strategies developed, as well as to assess the transversality and the gender perspective of the project. - In addition to the self-evaluation carried out by Friends of the Earth Aragon, all sectors involved in the project will be asked to evaluate our activity and initiative (participants, professionals involved, other groups, etc.) through an evaluation session and/or evaluation surveys. - Record of increased participation, especially of women and young people, in our association and related groups after the project. - Study of the subsequent impact of the project on participants and assessment of the continuity of the driving group through an evaluation meeting 6 months after the end of the project.
- ✉️ Contact
- luciamtierra@gmail.com / gonzalezrazabal@gmail.com
- 🔗 More Info
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