From September 1st to 7th, the European Conference on Sustainability for young adults (18-28 years) will be held in Bonn. This conference is organised by a German group of students within the network of the Youth Future Project.Imagine that YOU can come together with 100 other young people from all over Europe, 20 junior scientists and about 6 Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award (“Alternative Nobel Prize”) and the German Environment Prize. Together, on an eye-to-eye level and from an interdisciplinary and multi-perspective angle, you will work on challenges and innovative solutions in the field of sustainability .
During workshops, lectures, and discussions you will learn about the views and actions of important activists in the field of sustainability and you can gain an integrated understanding of the multidimensional challenges of environmental problems. We want to enable you to make new personal experiences and encounter new methodological approaches to sustainabilty issues. The multi-perspective approach shall encourage us to go beyond our academic disciplinary frameworks.
Therefore, during this four-day-long process, we will take a look at central challenges in the field of sustainablity in small working goups. During the conference lecturers from various fields (e.g. economy, ecology or social science) will be present in the working goups. So we will learn to understand the different challenges sustainability poses to various stakeholders and actors.
During the conference we will use our new knowledge and experiences as advice for future actions and practical next steps that you can implement through journalistic, academic research, civil-societal or environmental projects, which we will initiate in the last days of the conference.
The most promising ideas, developed during the conference, will be supported for one year in the “Visionaries in Action”-support-programme. They will be offered a starting capital of up to 2.000 Euros as well as coaching and professional seminars in NPO-project management.
Costs
The contribution-fee for early applications amounts to 115 EUR until May, 31st. From June, 1st on the minimum contribution is 145 EUR, although you can choose to pay more in order to help other participants come to the conference who would otherwise not be able to join us.
Scholarships
If you want to come to the conference but can not cover the expenses for the participation fee and/or the travel cost, you can apply for the Youth Future Conference’s Scholarship. The scholarship follows the principle of solidarity: People who can afford paying a higher participation fee enable financial less situated people to come to the conference by paying more than indicated. The scholarship is dedicated only to people between 18 and 30 years living or studying in Europe.
The number of scholarships granted depends on how many people apply for the scholarship and for how much money they apply. For the organizers it is much easier to cover the participation fee than the travel expenses. Of cause it is possible to, for example, only apply for a part of your travel expenses. For example when your whole itinerary is about 200€ and you can only cover 100€ by yourself, you can apply for the remaining 100€. You can check more info and apply for scholarship grant here.
The first places will be confirmed from the 3rd of June on. After this more places will be given out continuously.
If you would like to participate, but do not know, if you are really invited, for example because you feel to old, or to young, or because your are not living in Europe, please get in touch. In many cases we will find a solution. Just shoot us an email at conference@youthfuture.de