“I always thought that who sows utopia will reap reality” - Carlo PETRINI

The strategic partnership Idea(l)s in action addresses the issues of youth unemployment and the need to tends towards a more sustainable and inclusive development. It aims at inspiring and empowering young people, allowing them to believe in their abilities to take action and to create the positive change they hope for their lives and communities.

To achieve those goals, we set up a partnership between France, Greece, Italy and Portugal to: (a) theorize, improve and spread to new venues and new target groups a non-formal educational tool, the Heterotopia Tour, with high potentials in terms of Youth empowerment and promotion of more sustainable ways of living, based on cooperation and respect of Human Rights and Nature; (b) share good practices in the field of social innovation, so that we can better meet the challenges we are facing: youth unemployment, social inclusion, sustainable development.

The project is therefore, at the same time:

• a training program for youth and social workers;
• a research program based on experiences in active pedagogy and non-formal education;
• an awareness program on social and environmental issues and a promotional project of social innovation and innovative lifestyles.

It lasted 22 months and included 4 training activities (“Heterotopia Tours”), 4 large-scale dissemination events and 12 peer-to-peer trainings and small-scale local events.

It lead us to the creation of 2 main Intellectual Outputs:

• high-quality video/photo/audio coverage on exemplary social projects from Southern France, Greece, Sicily, and South Portugal, which are currently broadcasted on various channels and permanently accessible on an online transmedia platform (Heterotopies.net) ;
• a methodological Guide on “How to organize a Heterotopia Tour?” geared towards youth and social workers, educators and trainers.

Additional information on the visited projects, the workshops the participants took part in the trainings and the concepts they dealt with are also available on this Wiki Doku site in the Testimonies section.

The participants in the 2 fist Heterotopia Tours and the youth and social workers who took part in the two last Tours experimented the tool, in order to master it, while leading a research on it, in order to extract its main elements (out of the circumstantial factors that can affect it) and improve the method.

Thanks to peer-to-peer trainings, to their participation in international meetings and to the creation of this methodological Guide, they are spreading their results widely, within their communities and all over Europe.

The project also allowed us, as partners, to develop our activities and reach out to new venues and new target groups, thanks to the exchange of our practices, the capacity-building of our key staff and the extension of our network. The project was an opportunity for us to strengthen our cooperation and involve new counterparts in the process, creating thus dynamics at both local and European level.

Finally, the project is an opportunity to bring together a wide range of people and social organizations around common objectives. It contributes to give shape to a common concept for lasting creation and evaluation of specific solutions, reconciling the development of human societies and the preservation of nature, respecting each culture, and update the sustainable paths within the current political context.

FORME is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation based in Palermo, Italy, since 2014. It is composed by project managers, educators, social workers, journalists and other actors active in the social and educational fields who strongly believe in skills development as a trigger for positive social changes. The organization aims at empowering individuals, communities and social networks through skills development and through mediation between different sectors. It promotes non-formal education as a complementary methodology to formal education. It develops educational courses in order to reach tangible outcomes ant to bring closer theory to practice: the education world closer to the professional world. It mainly operates in Ballaro, a popular borough at the heart of Palermo, in a multicultural reality where most of the migrant community is present. It also collaborates with organizations working in peripheral and rural areas of the city in order to address the issues and socio-cultural realities as early school leaving and high rate of criminal acts (due to high poverty and unemployment), integration of refugees and asylum seekers, and emigration of young people, due to lack of job opportunities. More on: http://www.associazioneforme.com/

N.E.W. LOOPS is a Portuguese non-profit organization based in Algarve since 2014. It aims at creating a network of change-makers and establishing a participatory educational platform that can lead to *social, environmental and personal transformation*. It intends to propose practical solutions, adapted to both rural and urban areas, making it possible to match the satisfaction of people's needs and the preservation of the ecosystems, and to stimulate a new social and territorial dynamic based on the values of solidarity, freedom and sustainability. The association operates in an area (Algarve, South Portugal) strongly impacted by the financial crisis of 2008 and to the depopulation due to precarious, seasonal and low-paid working conditions and where mass tourism and intensive chemical agriculture dramatically threat the environment, especially along the coast. NEW Loops therefore aims at supporting social and environmental regeneration, leading to permanent changes and eventually to a more sustainable future. It is looking for solutions to turn human settlements into healthy ecosystems and provides training to people so that they can take action. Thanks to its *transdisciplinary team*, the association applies diverse methods such as non-formal education, permaculture techniques, visual and performative arts, social and environmental research. Through the organization of local trainings and workshops and its active participation in European projects, it allows people to come up with innovative solutions to tend towards sustainable living. More on: http://newloops.spajkit.com/