The Euro-Mediterranean Campuses for Sustainable Development were created 20 years ago from the will of our NGO to get young people involved in different initiatives for sustainable development. These international multidisciplinary workshops involving young Europeans have revealed themselves to be tremendous field based learning tools for the future professionals of local development and sustainable development.
For local economic actors, the Campuses are an opportunity to inject enthusiasm into and enrich a local project. In giving them the option to involve young people in their projects for sustainable development, the Campuses are consistent with a dynamic of an existing local project. According to the current state of the project, the Campus can complement the local project in several ways:
- The Campus – a trigger: before the local project, it can enable the basis of the issue to be identified and initiate action. For example, a Campus in the province of Sandanski in Bulgaria in 1995 carried out an inventory of traditional rural heritage in the Pirin National Park which served as the basis of a project for the framework for cultural tourism development.
- The Campus – a stimulator: in an existing local project, the Campus can revive or support a new dynamic and/or refocus the project. In 2006, in the Queyras Regional Nature Park in France, the Campus there enabled a guide on flash flood risk prevention to be produced concerning the community Ceillac which complemented the creation of an educational trail by the team of the Park.
- The Campus – a mediator: in some cases, the Campus intervenes in the context of a local barrier to progress. An external point of view of young people can therefore enable the project to be revived and to find a consensus between local partners. In Corsica, a Campus enabled the collection of opinions of different stakeholders and to reconcile the points of view around a project to create a nature reserve. It also enables stronger dialogue with the local population.
The MCE is member of the Campuses network since it creation and contributes to the organisation of various Campuses in Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Libanon.
