Introduction
The CO-GREEN project activities kicked-off in December 2022 with the planning of Event no. 1, which entailed the identification of the seminal group of stakeholders in the partner territories, their invitation and active involvement. The response from local stakeholders has been beyond expectations: when asked to register to the transnational webinars, 109 people sent in their forms, representing 4 countries.
The two transnational webinars have represented the online platform to launch discussion between the group of the project partners and the local stakeholders and experts, and to promote their involvement in the co-design of the building blocks of the CO-GREEN intervention model.
Each webinar lasted 4 hours, and took place on the Zoom interactive conferencing platform, where participants could attend the plenary sessions and join restricted working groups or breakout sessions.
The project Applicant (CAL) managed and promoted the two online events with the support of UNITORUN. They set the agenda and allocated the preparatory tasks to UNITOV and UNIRIJEKA, which specifically proposed the key methodological elements and led the discussion with the stakeholders.
At the beginning of the first webinar, CAL and UNITOV introduced the project’s shared workspace, namely “Padlet” granting access to all the registered participants. They provided their inputs and interacted on Padlet throughout the webinars, actively contributing to the development of documents and input papers. This shared workspace will be used throughout the project lifespan.
Event: Induction webinars to co-design the Framework for local participatory actions
The webinars were designed as induction events, bringing together groups of seminal stakeholders from the partner territories, namely:
- From Poland: Elbląg, Górno, Starachowice, and Wiązowna (Webinar 1: 12 participants; webinar 2: 18)
- Italy: Cosenza, Jesi (Webinar 1: 15 participants; webinar 2: 11)
- Croatia: Primorsko-Goranske Županije – PGŽ (Webinar 1: 15 participants; webinar 2: 15)
- Greece: Karditsa (Webinar 1: 12 participants; webinar 2: 11)
January 17th, 2023: The first webinar set off with a keynote speech by UMK “Sustainable local development – key challenges” that captured the scenario features characterising the urgent green transition (presentation in Annex 2). The participants were asked about their expectations about the planned work; the following slide of Mentimeter shows the interesting inputs:
Then, they were divided into “country groups” with the mandate to present themselves and their local communities in terms of:
- Demographic, social and economic profile
- Socio-cultural, environmental, historic, etc. features
- Social animation activities (civic participation)
- Main challenges to improve the quality of life of the residents
- Main environmental challenges and measures currently being implemented
The selected conferencing platform was Zoom, which easily allows for plenary sessions and breakout sessions, with the possibility to record the video and audio of the meetings. In order to ensure that participants could contribute actively in the discussion and in the development of contents, the interactive platform “Padlet” (https://padlet.com) was used in a very effective way. Padlet is going to be used throughout the project lifespan.
In the breakout sessions, participants could use their own national language. This decision was taken in response to the need to encourage the effective participation of the attendees, overcoming the obstacle of using English as a working language. The representatives of the project partners took part in the breakout sessions with the role of moderators. They mainly helped focus on the topics, took notes of the presented contents and acted, in some cases, as rapporteurs in the final plenary session.
The output of the first webinar comprises the four padlets that provide a sort of “green screenshots” of the involved territories. Whilst the details can be read in Annex 3, some general similarities have been detected, mainly with regards to: ageing population, population decline, increasing mistrust in institutions when it comes to improving quality of life and sustainable economic practices; lack of communication (the lockdowns due to the pandemic are partly responsible for this), fragmented society; major environmental risks, due to bad waste management, industrialisation or de-industrialisation processes; need for education pathways targeting all the population with ad hoc messages and registers. In all communities, the presence of civil society organisations (associations, NGOs, non formal groups, etc.) is a promising feature. These results were systematised and prepared to be further developed in the second webinar.
At the end of the webinar an instant evaluation was launched; the results show the majority of respondents’ largely positive feedback. In particular, respondents valued the possibility to speak out, interact with peers and experts, and listen to other experiences. Also, the continuity of the proposed activities and their hands-on approach were considered as strong points.
The following slide presents the respondents’ appreciation about some key aspects of the webinar:
January 23rd, 2023: With the second webinar, participants moved on from the results of the first meeting and discussed about the following topics:
- Needs and priority/key intervention areas
- Desiderata and aspirations for a green transition in their community
- Ideas for an action dealing with the identified priority areas
- Available resources and assets
The collaborative work in the breakout sessions was intense, with attendees agreeing on general statements and visions, but also dissenting on how to prioritise measures and solutions. In general, the main problems that attendees identified refer to the management of town services and spaces (e.g. public transport, waste management, accessible housing, accessible public spaces such as market places), activation of young people who tend to be disengaged; solutions to include “new” citizens, mainly migrants so to be a resource for the communities. The role of tourism, as a sustainable practice, is seen by most communities as an asset to be further explored and implemented with sustainable practices. Also the experiences of “energy communities” are seen as a possible breakthrough to support the costs of the green transition. In this respect, the participants showed awareness about the fact that citizens must bear part of the costs of moving from a carbon-based society and economy to sustainable sources of energy, and to careful and sustainable management of land, water and air. Although the actors to be engaged are already in place, there seems to be the need to identify methods and practices to build consensus and voice their demands.
At the end of the webinar the instant evaluation was launched; the results consolidate the positive feedback about the webinar (programme, schedule, activities) and highlight the respondents’ aspirations to ensure continuity to this kind of participatory and multi-stakeholder work.