Greenhouses of the Future

Youth centers as places for education for sustainable development challenges and solutions Study visit from 17th to 21st March in Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany The National Agency of the EU-program „Youth in Action“ and the ‘Center of Hollenfels - Education to sustainable Development’ are organizing a 3 day study visit on the topic of Quality Management in Education for sustainable Development. Sustainability is getting more and more important in all decision making processes. Educating young people to more sustainable life-choices is an important challenge for the youth sector and the sector of non-formal education. • How can you empower young people to take an active part in society? • How do you envision them for a more sustainable future? • How can you train them to consider the problems of our time in more critical and complex thinking-process? • How can networks help in that process? These are some of the questions that will be tackled during the training by study visits aiming to show some best practice examples in the Greater Region - French speaking part of Belgium (Wallonie), Luxembourg and the West of Germany (Rheinland-Pfalz). During the 3 days visits, the participants have the chance to explore different approaches and to exchange their own experiences. Objectives: • to show different models of Youth Centers working on the topic of sustainable development • to share best practice examples • to create partnerships for further projects • to set quality criteria for actual or future youth work Target group: • youth workers working on the topic of sustainable development • staff member of Youth Center tackling the topic Methods: • study visits of different centers in the Greater Region • information session • workshop sessions Program overview The first day, 18th March, the participants will get an introduction into what the EU-program “Youth in Action” can offer to realize the project ideas to foster the partnerships created during the study visit. At a reception in the ‘House of Greater Region’ the concept of trans-border-cooperation in Greater Region will be explained and the existing networks in ESD will be shown. In the afternoon the participants are visiting institutions in Germany. The theme of the first day will be: networking as a resource The second day, 19th March, the study visits are going to continue in Belgium. During that day the participants will get the chance to know each other better to create new partnerships and to foster their existing partnerships. Two centers will be visited. In a workshop-session the visits will be exploited and completed by practices of the participants. The theme of the second day will be: nature as a classroom The third day, the 20th March, the study visits will end by visiting institutions in Luxembourg. The end of the study visit is assigned to the final evaluation and to a farewell dinner offered by the organizers. During that day different possible structural organization forms of ESD will be scanned. The theme of the last day will be: (organizational) form follows function as a challenge