Empowering Urban Youth For Climate Action

The “Food Wave” project aims to increase the knowledge, awareness and engagement of young people between the ages of 15 and 35 on sustainable food consumption and production practices for the mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The project involves the development of activities to raise awareness and involve public opinion through: the co-creation of information materials for the implementation of information and mobilization campaigns, actions to engage young people online and offline, training courses aimed at young activists, activities aimed at young people from peripheral urban neighbourhoods, micro-financing for small youth associations and organisations, development of online and offline discussion platforms, youth exchanges between the northern and southern countries of the world, creation of food influencer networks , a pan-European campaign across digital channels, European Union Film Festivals, high-level events, collaboration with existing youth participation initiatives and visual art competitions.

Young people from 16 different European nations pledge to change their food consumption habits and actively promote the shift towards urban food systems that are ecological and inclusive, recognizing the effort of the European Union in mitigating the change climate and contributing to it.

Our Activities

The final independent external evaluation of the FoodWave initiative is aimed at analysing the quantity and quality of results to support the project evaluation to be carried out by the European Commission. The analysis focuses on the progress of the activities and the level of achievement of the expected results, without neglecting the description of obstacles and possible mitigation and adaptation measures, so as to provide the commissioning body and the partners of the initiative, suggestions aimed at improving the implementation of the project, considering also some management aspects. A work plan is implemented that focuses on the participation of the stakeholders involved by stimulating useful reflection for the development of possible future designs. The evaluation exercise is designed following the “theory-based” approach, integrating the critical reconstruction of the plan with some insights aimed at enriching the understanding of the most relevant practices that emerged; the proposed method follows the DAC evaluation criteria to which is added, given the specificity of the project, the criterion of “European added value.”

To carry out the evaluation activities, in addition to document analysis, information is collected through the following survey methods:

• Semi-structured interviews, in order to gather opinions, perceptions, information and data from partner organizations’ contact persons and key stakeholders, supplemented if necessary by group seminars/discussions in order to enhance group dynamics and related contributions;
• On-line questionnaires in order to involve the widest possible number of stakeholders to gather qualitative elements;
• Group seminars/discussions to gather “broad” and qualitative evaluative elements;
• Visits to some project countries and participation in project-sponsored events.