Talking about management and facilitation of youth environmental protection and awareness activities, the interest of Uniamoci Onlus on the topic was raised by its transnational cooperation with other European organizations. Yes, because from the first youth exchange in the far 2011, our youth workers collected the bad impressions of the participants about the dirt of our city (Palermo). Also the opportunity to travel abroad made us more conscious about the problem, so we started to look for possible solutions able to change the people attitude toward their urban environment and to make young people more active in that field.
Our first concrete contribution was the realization of the youth exchange Pro health and Nature in Palermo in November 2015. During the youth exchange the 30 participants from 5 European Countries were involved in group activities for the deepening and exploration of topics as nature, recycling, the problem of waste, the promotion of an healthy lifestyle and in practical activities as the organization of our first Swap Party, video-spot shooting for social awareness, an event of street sweaping (the first in our city) and the organization of a street event (here the web-site of the project: https://youth-exchange.wixsite.com/prohealthandnature).
From that experience on we continued to organize the Swap Party twice a year: at the beginning of Spring and at the beginning of Winter. Every time it is a big success, our friends, members and users simply love it, because it is a nice way to swap things that you don't want anymore for something that you find to be more interesting! A way to reduce waste ;)
The impact of that youth exchange on the local community inspired us for the realization of a big local project funded by Fondazione con il Sud ( a private Foundation that make calls for projects in the social field): Palermo Green. It was a project for the promotion of volunteering and active citizenship: we created teams of volunteers who made weekly actions of streat sweaping and street gardening in 5
areas and they also supported the creation and mainteinance of a vegetable garden accessible for people with disability. The project lasted a bit more than one year (March 2017 - May 2018) and it produced great results as terms of similar initiatives now promoted by different organizations and groups of people, to volunteers who went on in doing their
green initiatives on their own and... we cleaned 53.400 squared meters of streets, we took care of 196 flower beds and 10.880 squared meters of ground. In total we managed to involve 120 volunteers and 10 of them where with disability, in a dimension of inclusive volunteering. It was not always easy but we had our satisfactions!
Even if the project and with it the funding finished, we still have an inclusive group of volunteers that makes actions of street sweeping every two weeks in the district where our organization is located.
Almost at the end of this project, in March 2018, we organized another youth exchange: Youth for Green Cities in order to stimulate young people from different European Countries to initiate green actions in their cities: during the days in Palermo the inclusive and multicultural group of young people visited an accessible urban vegetable garden, made street sweeping and gardening actions, planned a model of 3D green city, created a facebook campaign to spread messages of environmental protection and organized some activities about environment for the pupils of a primary school (here the web site of the project https://youth-exchange.wixsite.com/youthforgreencities).
Another interesting project was Riciclo e inclusione verso un futuro sostenibile (Upcycling and inclusion towards a sustainable future). It was developed from May 2018 to April 2019 and it was an occasion to discuss with our users and volunteers about waste, recycling and upcycling, involving them in raising social awareness on this topics by writing articles shared on-line; subsequently we started a long workshop for the production of upcycled objects and video tutorials about how to create them. Final activities were the creation of a wall of kindness (a wall where to hang disused dresses so that they could be available for the people in need), some workshop about creative upcycling for children and a Swap party.
Here the link of the blog of our project: https://ricicloeinclusione.blogspot.com/. This project was funded by Ottox1000 Chiesa Valdese. The success of this project stimulated us to make a new one going on with creative upcycling workshops and the creation of natural soaps and detergents, it will start in the next months!
Talking about geen actions, how to not to mention also the creation of a sensory garden for children in the garden of a primary school: we made it in May 2019 creating a sensory path through different stones surfaces, aromatic plants, plants with coloured flowers, wind chimes in order to stimulate the children's five senses and interest toward the nature. It was an activity of an Erasmus+ strategic partnership in the field of adult education called Art of Inclusion.
