The kick-off meeting of the project People and Planet: A Common Destiny, that marked its official launch among all its partners, occurred on the 12th of January, via zoom. 30 representatives from the several partner and associated organisations of the project attended the meeting which was planned and moderated from Portugal by Câmara Municipal de Loures (Loures Municipality) and IMVF.
The meeting started by 9 AM with greetings from all the participants and the presentation of the agenda for the rest of the day. Following the inaugural part, Hermínia Ribeiro, global supervisor of the project, moderated the activity of get to know each other which allowed all the participants to present themselves and express their first impressions. Then Pedro Cruz, project coordinator, took over the moderation and moved to the overall project presentation, specifying all the activities that will be implemented together by all the partners.
In the afternoon, João Ribeiro took the lead as FUEL’s representative, one of the project’s partners, and introduced the brand architecture of the project and the communication strategy that will be adopted for the pan European campaign #WaterOfTheFuture – the biggest activity included in the project. Soon after, the financial component of the project was presented by Jorge Morais, the financial supervisor. By the end of the working day, Pedro Cruz took the lead once again to explain the governance structure of the project, that is the management, monitoring and reporting mechanisms to be adopted among the partners. The kick-off meeting ended with the announcement of future meetings, as well as the tasks that need to be addressed with priority in the coming weeks.
The main goal of the People and Planet project is not only to improve the knowledge and awareness of young citizens from Europe about the most urgent topics concerning climate change, but also to involve and engage these young citizens to become actors of change that encourage more sustainable behaviours and life-styles.
The project also focuses on the strengthening of the competencies of local policy-makers in the promotion of more sustainable development policies and empowering them with analysis tools to understand the interdependence relations that are being established at the glocal level.
In order to achieve this goal, the project People and Planet will launch a pan European campaign named #WaterOfTheFuture that aims to advert the young population of 8 EU member-states about water scarcity, firstly, and about the challenges posed by climate change, secondly. As part of this campaign many other activities will be developed, with different methodological strategies, namely trainings and workshops to personnel and policy-makers from local authorities. The project joins 19 partners, 4 of them are associated, from 8 EU member-states and Cape Verde.
The European Commission’s Development Education and Awareness Raising Programme (DEAR) supports projects that engage the European Union public in worldwide issues of social, economic and environmental development.
