Polis association is involved since May 2022 in the ‘Green Reporters’ project which is supported by the EU Erasmus+ program (‘Small-scale partnerships in youth’ Action, 2021 Call), and will last till December 2023.

The project is addressed to young people, students in fields related to the environmental and social sciences, young workers or unemployed people, aged 18 to 30, based in Italy and in Greece. The project aims to train young participants so that they develop skills and competencies in environmental communication, while becoming aware of crucial environmental issues of our times and policy responses. The overall aim is to empower young people so that they develop an active citizenship attitude, actively participating in environment decision-making processes in their communities.

A cycle of online seminars, from September 2022 till April 2023, is currently being organized, and an in-person training session is going to take place in Italy, in May 2023. Young participants will be introduced to the current environmental challenges and the envisaged policy responses at a European level, and to the techniques of environmental journalism and reporting, by experts in the field, academics, journalists, photo-reporters, as well as by representatives of environmental movements and local authorities. Through an active learning process, based on an interdisciplinary approach and a peer-to-peer learning process, participants will be accompanied to start acting as ‘Green Reporters’, by designing and creating by themselves communication material on environment, presenting their productions to the group, confronting them to fellow participants’ productions, revising and changing them for the better.

As the young participants will collaborate to share news about environmental issues in their countries, identifying common and differentiated questions and responses, the project is expected to enhance participants’ interdisciplinary perspective and enrich their perception on the cross-border dimensions of environmental questions, while the content to be produced is expected to highlight the transnational nature of environmental issues and the European dimension of the responses to these issues.

The project is preparing to set up a digital platform in order to gradually integrate and disseminate the communication material that will have been created by the young ‘Green Reporters’ throughout the duration of the project, as well as the lecturers’ presentations and shared material (i.e. environmental content by news agencies, bibliography, filmography, etc). The project’s productions will thus form a teaching trunk composed by educational material to be used by teachers and environmental educators, while helping to raise awareness on environmental issues among the youth and the general public.

The ‘Green Reporters’ project brings together ‘PERIPLI – Culture e Società Euromediterranee’ acting as the lead partner, an Italian organization promoting the dialogue among Euro-Mediterranean cultures and societies through the analysis of social, historic and political dimensions of European and national politics, along with the Greek organization ‘POLIS – International Network for Environmental Education’, having a longstanding experience in the promotion of research, training and action for Environmental Education and Communication, and the creation of educational material on environment.