‘Sustainable Synergies III’ with the European Solidarity Corps

As we now complete our ESC program Sustainable Synergies III, we can clearly observe and appreciate its overall regenerative effect on School of the Earth’s human ecosystem.

Interacting with people and the land within the context of this program has resulted in a series of proactive processes that have facilitated the establishment of new meaningful connections and fruitful interactions within our local community – that are still in progress!

We are grateful for the constructive imprint of this program on both visible and invisible structures of our organisation and we want to thank all our volunteers and partners that contributed their energy, intelligence, ingenuity and enthusiasm to make it happen!

About the project:

The “Sustainable Synergies III” project has been a core part of our work and has emphasized on raising awareness on environmental and social challenges within the local community, while promoting active engagement in sustainable and regenerative practices with a positive environmental impact.

It has focused on the development and dissemination of techniques and practices that promote creative interaction between the people of our local community regarding issues of sustainable food production, renewable energy systems, cultural and environmental regeneration and creative environmental activism.

Using tools like permaculture design, non formal education, skill sharing, non violent communication and sociocracy we have aimed at creating the conditions for an open synergistic process that consists of diverse creative activities and promotes active experiential learning as well as positive inter-cultural interaction.

During the project, seven young volunteers from Italy, Spain, France, Sweden and Germany have joined the School of the Earth human ecosystem for a shared intercultural non formal educational experience. Three of them have spent a whole year with us while the other four have joined the program for 2 months each.

The volunteer activities of the ‘Sustainable Synergies III’ project have been designed in such a way so as to create a learning process that offers community benefit while providing a variety of informal and non-formal methods to generate learning.

The participants have been highly enthusiastic and responsive to these activities and have significantly improved their skills in active participation, while operating in a multicultural environment.

This program has particularly emphasized on the development of organizational and practical hands-on skills in the planning, facilitation and implementation of raising awareness events and skill sharing workshops on Social Permaculture and non violent communication, permaculture food production systems design and electricity production from renewable energy.

In collaboration with our project partners (Servei Civil Internacional de Catalunya in Spain, Associazione Interculturale NUR in Italy, Nachhaltiger in Germany, Relearn Suderbyn in Sweden and Via Brachy in France), our organisation has put the maximum effort in creating a fertile environment for youth mobility in Europe in order to promote, develop and apply sustainability in practice.

We wish that the new skills that the participants have acquired will grant them well equipped for an engagement with environmental tasks of all kinds, both on a community activist level as well as in a professional environment.

More info about the project here.

The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.