Education for Sustainable Development

The most recent EUFED project, ESPACE - or “Education for sustainability partnerships” - both supports this Charter and hopefully will be the springboard for taking it a step further.  The idea of ESAPCE is to enhance both the informal and the formal learning experience of our guests allowing us to disseminate and share our special Youth Hostel values.

For a long time sustainability has been one of the core issues for EUFED - the European Youth Hostel Federation. We recognised that the quality of Youth Hostel staff are at the heart of the sustainability process.   Together with ten partners from seven countries, EUFED and LAJ, the Wallonian Youth Hostel Association held the ESPACE workshop on Education for Sustainable Development at Brussels “Génération Europe” Youth Hostel from 24 till 28 May. The participants came from European Youth Hostel associations and centres for environmental education across Europe.

The aim of the workshop was to analyse staff training needs and opportunities and then based on these develop a high-quality training programme on sustainable development and learning for Youth Hostel staff.  The next step after the workshop is to plan a project that will enable Youth Hostels to better meet the needs and aspirations of current young travellers and the local communities in their destinations without jeopardising the requirements of future generations.

Throughout Europe, millions of young people visit Youth Hostels and centres each year and many of them take part in some form of informal and sometimes non-formal learning during their stay.  Popular topics for these experiences are environmental and social issues.  “Young animateurs at Youth Hostels are full of energy and enthusiasm but their understanding of how to train the young people visiting Youth Hostels effectively, and their understanding of sustainability were both relatively weak”, Constanze Adolf, EUFED’s Operating Director stated. “Therefore, we want to work on enhancing the effectiveness and quality of these courses through an understanding of the non-formal learning process and a greater background on issues related to Sustainable Development.”

James Hindson, Director of “Sense & Sustainability”, an NGO specialized in Education for Sustainable Development and main partner of the project underlined: “Youth Hostels have a great opportunity to encourage the new ecological bahviours amongst young people and Youth Hostel staff are key to this process. Many already engage young people in wonderful programmes but more could be done especially training staff to develop new approach to informal and non-formal learning.”

During the workshop, participants interviewed Youth Hostel staff and a group of young people from Jaques Brel and Génération Europe Hostels in Brussels to learn about their needs. This is the basis for the development of a targeted training course for staff working in Youth Hostels and youth centres that either, currently offer, or want to offer non-formal education programmes on sustainability. The group also visited „GREEN WEEK“, the biggest annual conference on European environment policy, focusing on "Resource Efficiency - Using less, living better". Natasha Jovicic from the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency presented funding opportunities of follow-up projects and Thierry Dufour from the Bureau International Jeunesse joined the group to inform about the “Youth in Action programme”.

Constanze Adolf