Empowering more than 1,000 Romanian youth to promote Agenda 2030

The level of information, responsibility, and active participation (both at the community level and during the decision-making process) towards stopping global warming and reducing its effects is currently insufficient in Romania. Sustainability and climate change projections clearly indicate the need for intervention and major changes in many dimensions of society in the future.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the 2030 Agenda, were still at the strategic planning stage in 2020, almost five years after being launched by the United Nations states. To ensure sustainable development, all stakeholders must come together to effectively implement these guidelines and create a better future.

In this spirit, Romanian Scouts have teamed up with A.R.T. Fusion and the Foundation New Horizons to implement "Future through Actions". By increasing the level of active responsibility of youth, youth leaders and teachers in Romania regarding sustainability and climate change, they would stimulate the active participation process in the decision-making process at local and regional level in Romania, regarding Agenda 2030.

Since the project began, Romanian Scouts have involved 11 local Scout centres at the national level to promote active participation. Twenty Scout trainers conducted 32 workshops for more than 500 participants aged 14 to 30 from 10 counties. As a result of the first phase of the project, almost 1,000 hours of active volunteer work have been accumulated.

“These meetings helped me understand how critical it is to consume sparingly, to think ten times before making a purchase, and how the consequences of making the wrong choices can lead to regret later in life,” said Gabriel, one of the workshop participants. 

"With these workshops, we wanted to make sure participants understood how critical their everyday actions are, how meaningful global citizenship is, and how much they can impact what happens on other continents or even right here" said Monica Benghe, Scout leader at Local Centre “Dacia Felix” Arges.

As a result of the project, they will become an active network of 44 trainers in non-formal education who will train 1200 young people between 15 and 30 in 16 localities in Romania in order to develop global citizenship competencies. With the help of trainers, these young people will be able to develop citizen participation activities and contribute to the advocacy component of the project. The goal is to influence the way the 16 local authorities implement the 2030 Agenda implementation strategy through a multi-sectoral working group.

Project funding is received through the Active Citizens Fund Romania, a program funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway through the EEA Grants 2014-2021.

This article is part of the Scouting Forward campaign that aims to celebrate how scouting empowers youth to become active citizens to respond to the social, economic, and environmental challenges facing our world, supported by the Erasmus+ programme.