Recognition of GEN’s work in education for sustainabilty

Written by: Dario Ferraro

After finally recognising the urgency of environmental and climate challenges, developing the EU Green Deal, and setting those as priorities in the Erasmus+ program, the EU Commission has published very recently its Green Competences Framework. This means that they recognised a set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that anybody involved in education at any level in the EU should manage to live, work and act in a sustainable manner while encouraging others to do the same. This framework gives us the opportunity to show how relevant are, for the European Green Deal, the educational initiatives that GEN Europe members were promoting in the fields of permaculture, ecosystem restoration, eco-construction, etc.

At the same time, another publication by the Youth Partnership formed by the European Union and the Council of Europe called Sustainability in Learning Mobility shows how their official understanding of sustainability, at least in the field of youth work, is expanding to integrate the economical, social and even cultural dimension. The study presents a model to analyze organisations that are active in the youth sector regarding their engagement with sustainability on a scale that goes from processes to content to activism, and finally presents a map of actors and good practices. And, guess what? GEN Europe, NextGEN and Yes to Sustainability are presented as some of the more interesting practices in the field (on page 16).

It’s a great recognition of what we’ve been doing and promoting in the last years, and it’s worth celebrating!