An overview of the initiative

The GreenCool – ‘Let me influence your green self! – Skill development in the encouragement of mindset towards environmental awareness and sustainable development in the alliance of ECoC’ project funded by the European Union has been launched from 28th of February, 2022.

The European Union provides a grant of EUR 336,503 for the implementation of the project for the period: 28th February 2022 – 28 th October 2024.

The Partnership consisting of the University of Pannonia (coordinator), Militos Consulting S.A., Vytautas Magnus University, West University of Timisoara, University of Tartu successfully started the project work in the Kick-off meeting.

RESULTS AND DELIVERABLES

What we plan to do

The general goal of the project is to develop environmental awareness among university students and to spread the thought of sustainable development among the widest possible age groups at events that attract large audience. We committed to develop an innovative online course material and to mainstream sustainable development in all curricula for higher education students. Recognizing the convincing power of young influencers, the project aims to reach out to all age groups of audience at cultural events and festivals in the various European Capitals of Culture to encourage environmentally conscious activity and to be active members and beneficiaries of sustainable development. Furthermore our goal is to equip students with communication tools and sustainable attitude to become effective advocates for advancing EU green economy and culture.

This objective encompasses the following specific objectives:

  • Greenfluence Practice Collection and Research: methodological framework for implementation by exploring influencer tools and techniques and communication channels through youth can be approached in the 21st century.
  • Developing the Massive Online Open Course: course curriculum-design and development of material in two platforms.
  • Blended ECoC Greenfluencer Pilot Course on national level: the outcome of the course is a participation in an ECoC event/festival, where students can try and test their knowledge and influence audience offline.
  • Blended ECoC Greenfluencer International Course: the best 4 students and 2 lecturers from each university are entitled to be present at the final Greencool ECoC event in Tartu.
  • PROFESSIONAL CONTENT AND GUIDELINES for international online workshop for stakeholders to give suggestions how to integrate these techniques into subjects from any disciplines in order to provide the knowledge for any universities.

INNOVATIONS

Innovative Aspects of the Project

The innovative character of the project can be discovered in the following milestones:

  • Integrating technological developments into education and knowledge share.
  • Influencers are considered as driving force behind new initiatives and movements. Using influencers, university students as green ambassadors is also an innovative and creative way of reaching the target group, and so have greater impact.
  • The influencers can connect easily with their followers (their audience), therefore they are able to increase awareness and drive action among their followers. It seems innovative to try out of 21st-century influencer techniques offline, using online technology in offline environment.
  • The other innovative aspects that the university project partners are all potential European Capital of Culture in the next three years. Their university and city (ECoC) values and challenges bond them together as they all focus on integrity, community, engagement, sustainability, heritage, innovation, awareness of diversity.

ACTIVITIES PERFORMED TO DATE

Progress made

As a first step to achieve the defined goals and harmonize the partnership, we held the first transnational project meeting on 3-4 th March, 2022. The Kick-off meeting was organised in Veszprém by the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Pannonia with 5 Partners from 5 different countries who discussed besides financial, dissemination, QA and management issues the overall process and the main milestones of the project but with particular emphasis on the preparation for the first project results e.g. conducting desk top (best practices, case studies collection) research in EU countries; questionnaire survey with students and influencers; and focus-group interviews with influencers.

NEXT STEPS

Future issues

The goals of the project can only be achieved if we are aware of the communication techniques we can use to influence the target group on the topic to be developed.

In the first stage we will conduct a comprehensive research, according to the following process:

  • Desktop research, including literature review and best practices, case studies collection
  • Questionnaire survey with students and influencers partly based on previous studies and desk top research, and developed by researchers on this field
  • Focus-group interviews with influencers to explore influencer tools and techniques. We will conduct a survey among students (secondary and tertiary education), young adults (age between 18-25) and influencers in the partner ECoC cities (on the required competencies) in cooperation with each partner in each country (PR1).

CONTACT DETAILS:

greencoolproject.eu

facebook.com/greencoolproject

linkedin.com/company/greencoolproject/

This project (n° 2021-1-HU01-KA220-HED-000027563) has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author(s), and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.