Climate change, economic inequality and social divisions urgently require innovative responses at multiple levels. The Paris Agreement, UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and Europe 2020 Strategy demonstrate substantial will at national and international levels to tackle these challenges, although actual implementation can be difficult and slow. At the local level though, there is a vibrant movement of community-led initiatives on climate change and sustainability. These Community-Led Initiatives (CLIs) are transformative social innovations that involve new ways of being, organising, negotiating and acting. There are thousands of such initiatives across Europe, from ecovillages to community energy cooperatives, social enterprises to zero-waste initiatives. Several recent transnational research projects have highlighted that the prospects for rapid transitions to sustainability are highest where municipal authorities collaborate with community-led initiatives. A 2018 paper from the European Economic and Social Committee on ‘Boosting climate actions by non-State actors’ reflects this growing recognition also at EU and global levels, and in February 2018, the Council of the EU for the first time acknowledged the critical role of local communities in addressing climate challenges. It is to fully leverage this potential, that the Ecovillage Transition in Action project and its outputs were designed. In our networks we see examples of engaged rural communities working for positive change who feel unsupported by local government. We also see many municipalities with positive goals and a determination to act, who are struggling to build genuinely collaborative relationships with local citizens and initiatives. We therefore aim to provide open and innovative education and materials designed to support both educators and adult learners develop key competences in cross-sectoral partnership building, community building, participatory design and collaboration between local authorities, communities and citizens in primarily rural areas. We wish to: - Grow the capacity of educators, local initiatives, local authorities, citizens and and community organisers to facilitate this crucial but complicated collaboration, and to teach those skills and capacities to others. - Provide accessible and transferable educational tools, trainings, curricula, and methods for bringing together CLIs and local government actors, and increase the depth and quality of collaboration between them. - Create and prototype a set of replicable trainings that support our target groups to acquire key competencies and skills for what we call Ecovillage Transition - a process where municipal authorities and local citizens work together to develop alternative pathways to local development, based on a holistic framework of social, cultural, economic and ecological regeneration. Through an inventory of good practice, successful examples and challenges in collaboration between local governments and community-led initiatives in rural locations, we will create an Ecovillage Transition Toolkit integrating practical experience and research – designed to foster partnership, engagement and participatory, holistic local development.A central element of the project is the development of new curricula for Ecovillage Transition, as well as a Training of Trainers module – both providing innovative materials and pedagogies for community-led initiatives, local authorities, educators and active citizens to work together for positive impactFinally, our Ecovillage Transition Tracker will combine elements of impact assessment, design thinking and participatory monitoring and evaluation. It aims to provide local initiatives and authorities with an innovative and practical framework and collaborative methodology for tracking the ongoing implementation of multi-stakeholder projects in ways that ensure dynamic steering, ongoing learning, and goals that matter to local communities. The EU-funded TESS research project noted that if 5 % of EU citizens engaged in community-led climate mitigation initiatives, 85% of EU-28 countries would achieve their 2020 emissions targets. TESS also highlighted the awareness raising, social cohesion, creation of local livelihoods and wealth retention, and the feeling of empowerment that citizens experience by working together to bring about change - and that 63% of the surveyed CLIs have been replicated elsewhere. Inspired, we aim to contribute to- rapidly scaling and spreading the type of innovative, sustainable and inclusive local solutions and impact already implemented by ecovillages and other community-led initiatives. - increased capacity for partnership-building and collaboration between CLIs and municipalities across Europe.- the development of innovative education for sustainable local development, capable of increasing collective capacity to take direct action to achieve the UN SDGs and climate agreements

This strategic partnership is centered on the exchange of good practice regarding sustainability youth exchanges and specifically the question how the partners can support young people to create successful and high quality youth exchange projects. It reflects the European Youth Goal ‘Sustainable Green Europe’.The project partners are:- the German branch of the Global Ecovillage Network of Europe (coordinating partner);- the Spanish branch of the Global Ecovillage Network of Europe;- GEN Deutschland (Germany)- Red Ibérica de Ecoaldeas (Spain)- Rete Italiana Villaggi Ecologici (Italy)- Ecodorpen Netwerk (Netherlands)- Zavod Veles (Slovenia)- Zeleno Doba (Serbia)‘YES to Sustainability‘ (YTS) is a series of youth exchanges in ecovillages and local sustainability projects for young adults that address different aspects of sustainability, around which an informal and very loose network of individuals (mainly young people) and organisations has formed.An ecovillage is an intentional or traditional community that is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate social and natural environments. The 4 dimensions of sustainability (ecology, economy, the social and the cultural) are integrated into a holistic approach.Ecovillages have been piloting low carbon lifestyles inspiring bottom-up changes that complement policy reform. Lifestyle changes and climate-friendly choices are needed to keep global warming within planetary boundaries. Ever more youth are becoming aware of the climate crisis and other global issues, demanding change and looking for answers.The partner organisations know many very motivated and engaged young people willing to put time and effort into developing and applying for YTS youth exchanges, but success rates are discouragingly low. How can we support youth to develop quality youth exchanges? This is the main focus, topic and aim of this project.The project output is a 20-page brochure ‘Success factors in sustainability youth exchanges’ that will be freely accessible online. Through a peer learning process, where the partners exchange their experiences and good practice around sustainability youth exchanges, success factors and quality indicators for designing sustainability youth exchanges are identified. The brochure includes good practice examples that may be helpful for others in designing their sustainability youth exchange projects. One topic is how to design a youth exchange sustainably with a low carbon footprint.The project activity ‘Mentoring and YTS Youth Exchanges Support Scheme’ aims at supporting newcomers to design quality projects - usually participants of YTS youth exchanges (= young people) who want to step up to become organisers and group leaders of sustainability youth exchanges. The partners share their experiences and reflect together - experiment with different modalities - run small pilots testing different mentoring approaches - ask for detailed feedback from the target group - identify the most promising ones (possibly to be fully developed in future projects). This process allows the partners to develop capacity to better respond to the need of willing and motivated youth for support in developing quality projects.Part of the exchange process are two peer-learning trainings for the youth workers of all participating organisations and four long-term mobilities of youth workers. These activities significantly deepen the exchange between partners and improve the quality of project results.The consortium will reach out to a large number of stakeholders, young people and particularly those who are willing to step up and become organisers of sustainability youth exchanges, local sustainability projects that are potential hosts and youth organisations. Various networking activities, particularly on social media, will contribute to making ‘YES to Sustainability‘ more well known among young people, promote exchange about sustainable ways of life and foster peer learning.The project results will be widely disseminated online and offline to many relevant stakeholders. The partner GEN Europe, the European umbrella organisation of ecovillages, plays a crucial role in spreading widely to a very large number of sustainability projects in over 30 countries. It’s youth wing NextGEN will contribute to making the project more well known among young people.Through the project, young people are supported to become active citizens and change agents towards a low carbon society as organisers and group leaders in sustainability youth exchanges.