Although fear of pollution and climate change is one of the biggest concerns of young people across all milieus according to recent youth studies, predominantly so-called 'idealistic' adolescents are involved in environmental and climate protection issues. Currently, there is little structured information available about those young people who are not (yet) involved in these issues. Therefore, it is not clear what their environmental attitudes are and how they can be approached, motivated and won over for participation.
Hence, the German Environmental Agency commissioned ConPolicy – together with a consortium of IKU – Die Dialoggestalter, UfU – Unabhängiges Institut für Umweltfragen and ism – Institut für Sozialpädagogische Forschung Mainz ieH – to investigate how adolescents and young adults who are not yet active in the field of climate and environmental protection, or sustainability can be addressed and sensitized with regard to these topics.
A special focus of the project lies on transformative dialogue processes to bring together actors from different thematic areas of open youth work as well as from youth associations. The results of the research project will lead to a practice-oriented handbook as well as to political recommendations for action for the German Federal Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection. In addition, the results will be presented and discussed at a public youth forum with around 100 participants.
Further information on the project can be found here.