Europe passed sustainability strategies on all levels of governance. The implementation of these strategies is up to the administrations, but also to citizens and entrepreneurs. For sustainability strategies to be successful, acceptance and integration within society is important. Challenges are e.g. the lack of social coherence and a welfare gap among the different EU member states. Related to this situation, sustainability strategies often face denial and indifference especially in economically weaker states. But implementation of sustainability strategies depends on citizen’s participation on a European, national and local level. For this communication strategies are necessary.
Target group of the project are multipliers from NGOs (main focus), administrations and science coming from Central and East European new member states, Germany and candidate states. The project aims at improving communication strategies for a sustainable development and directly addresses NGO civil society actors in this field. Starting from a European level, national sustainability strategies and Local-Agenda-21 strategies on the municipal level are going to be integrated into the formulation and intermediation of instruments for a communication strategy. The project results are going to be combined in a small online compendium with guidelines for effective sustainability communication. The project aims as well at developing a handout on volunteer management that promotes local engagement for sustainability.

All in all four meetings are planned:

First: three-day workshop with partners from CEE-states and Germany – review of present situation (place: Lithuania) – split into three parts: 1. Workshop of partners to review present sustainability strategies in their home countries, 2. Workshop to exchange current state of affairs concerning citizen’s participation and implementation of volunteer management in partner organisations, 3. Public panel discussion to present workshop results.
(25th -27th July 2006)

Second: three-day workshop with partners and institutions, which promote engagement to discuss a draft version of the guidelines (place: Germany, Brandenburg) – split into two parts: 1. two-day workshop to present institutions that promote citizens’ participation, to discuss concepts of volunteer management and to develop concepts of volunteering as part of implementing sustainability strategies on a local and regional level. 2. Panel discussion to present workshop results.
(23rd – 25th October 2006)

Third: three-day workshop with partners and journalists/media to discuss strategies affecting the public (place: Slovakia). Journalists are invited to this meeting to debate different possibilities of communication strategies concerning sustainability and a public panel discussion about sustainability communication is held.
(1st - 3rd February 2007)

Fourth: Final conference with representatives from NGOs, administrations, economy, adult educators and media representatives to present all working results (place: Poland). click for program
(19th - 20th April 2007)