This article is part of a three-part series focusing on the successes, challenges and lessons learnt from ACCTING’s pilot projects.
Three years ago, the ACCTING project set out to explore how to make the European Green Deal more inclusive and just, especially for communities often left behind. Alongside research activities, ten pilot projects across Europe were funded. Each one was a real-world experiment, shaped by the local context, contributing to ACCTING’s core mission: to understand how Green Deal policies affect different communities, and to find inclusive, practical ways to support sustainable behaviour and reduce inequalities.
The specific objectives of each pilot project as well as the context in which they were implemented however vary greatly – this includes the sectoral (from fire resilience to cycling) and geographic context (from rural Zagori to urban Palermo), as well as the primary target group (from Roma communities to disadvantaged youth). The strong engagement with the specific context of the target groups is one of the strengths of the pilots. At the same time, they make a synthesis of results challenging.
Nevertheless, there is a range of shared successes (and enabling factors underlying these successes), challenges and obstacles as well as general lessons learnt that can be identified as cross-cutting.
What made the pilot projects successful?
Success #1: Community ownership
“Projects may start and end, but people remain”.
Many of the pilot projects succeeded in ensuring the involvement and ownership of local communities in the planning and implementation of their projects. This was highlighted as instrumental for the project’s success, particularly in relation to ensuring long-term buy-in and project sustainability – by remaining relevant and adaptive to community-needs.
Specific examples include the village coordination committees established in Dialogue & Action Against Wildfires at the very outset of the project (and continuing right through all project stages). The School goes green project engaged a group of high school students (‘Sindacato’) from the onset in the design, implementation and peer-to-peer facilitation of the volunteering experience. According to their experience, this was a key factor for the high turnout and satisfaction of participating students and distilled a sense of ownership and self-actualisation in the Sindacato students. Similarly, the project Todas en bici decided to set-up a multi-organisational steering team with decentralised and collective decision-making processes. According to the organisers, such collective ownership increases the likelihood of continuing beyond the project’s timeframe.
Success #2: Inclusive co-creation
“Nothing about them, without them.”
Here, a strongly related point is the commitment to involving affected / vulnerable stakeholders as much as possible throughout the pilot process. As highlighted in Dialogue & Action Against Wildfires, this was not only a question of justice but also served as a valuable source of insight. The implementation team highlighted the decisive role of local knowledge in shaping effective disaster management strategies, with community mapping scenario-based worksheets unearthing a wealth of insights regarding local terrain, water sources, and historical fire patterns. These had not been considered in previous official fire prevention strategies. The Echoversity project took a similarly inclusive approach throughout the project’s design and implementation phases, seeking the active participation of a diverse group of stakeholders, farmers, artisans, educators, and residents, in the design and implementation of the project activities.
Success #3: Empowerment of marginalised groups
“Pride in my heritage, strength in my traditions, harmony with my land.”
Through their continued consultation and involvement, a noticeable change was observed in many of the marginalised communities included in the pilots. This relates to an increased sense of self-efficacy and -empowerment in relation to the topic at hand. Through the project, communities understood the value they bring to the achievement of larger goals.
For example, the inclusion of local villagers in Dialogue & Action Against Wildfires’s fire prevention strategies through interactive workshops, including identification of different roles for individuals in emergencies, related training programmes, etc. This workshop methodology (rather than relying on the usual top-down public information campaigns), contributes substantially to imparting both knowledge and confidence.
At other times, this also contributed to wider social goals beyond environmental protection, boosting a community’s sense of identity and self-esteem, and instilling a sense of pride for one’s own cultural and natural heritage and traditions. The importance of the Zagori region’s transhumance practices in Echoversity, linking to protection of the area’s strong biodiversity, maintenance of local trails, and wool-crafting heritage, was a clear example. This was made evident to local communities through the project as a whole, and particularly through the participation of prestigious local organisations, such as the University of Ioannina.
Success #4: Making climate protection fun and engaging
Piloting the party method
There has been widespread societal discussion on the need to make environmentalist activities fun and exciting, as opposed to an additional burden. Failure to do so can lead to the disengage of the public from sustainable lifestyles and activism, despite climate change remaining a real and present concern. In this context, a number of the Pilot projects presented a genuine alternative, grounded in a sense of playfulness and community co-creation.
For instance, the educational programme of Echoversity was successful in linking the topic of biodiversity protection to positive experiences through direct interaction with their natural environment. This connection of children with their natural environment and awareness raising about the links to cultural heritage, creates meaningful memories for future decision-makers, fostering a lasting appreciation for heritage and sustainability. Similarly, School goes green highlighted the importance of informal moments, or the “party method”, into the project experience to build relationship and foster engagement.
Success #5: Raising consciousness around vulnerability and inclusivity
Local communities and stakeholders were at times challenged to think about their own positionality and how they too could maximise inclusivity. In Uključi se! (Get involved!), for instance, a question was added in the application form relating to inclusion of vulnerable groups. This motivated the youth applying to the project’s volunteer programmes to think about which demographics and social groups were still missing from the project, providing the project organisers with a clearer overview on shortcomings to address.
Success #6: Translation of Green Deal policies to lived realities
ACCTING’s pilots successfully translated high-level concepts of the Green Deal to the lived reality of their target groups – an explicit rationale for the ACCTING project’s overall motivation regarding work with bottom-up organisations.
For instance, School goes green made a conscious effort in linking the high-level policy priorities of the European Green Deal with the lived reality of the students through participatory and reflexive methods during the initial workshop, the volunteering experience and the final event. As a result, students reported a considerably higher level of understanding of the European Green Deal and its principles.
Supporting Roma micro-entrepreneurs in Albania towards better environmental sustainability had significant success supporting participating SMEs by providing them with equipment and materials valued at €1,000 per enterprise. This proved highly labour-intensive, owing to the beneficiaries’ limited experience with formal business planning. Nonetheless, the results were highly effective in ensuring real value for the day-to-day business realities of each enterprise, leading to cost savings and reduced environmental impact. The main effect being the effective change in management – budgeting makes it feasible to take decisions on how the business is managed and ensure environmental impacts are minimised.
Success #7: Ensuring communities derive tangible benefits
Other success factors point to the project’s legacy and longer-term impact. Plans, strategies, worksheets and other typical deliverables can be valuable from a policy and replication / multiplication perspective. Yet several Pilot projects cited the importance of also linking the project outcomes to tangible benefits for participants and the wider community, making it easier to position the project as successful from the perspective of local communities.
One example is creation of new and/or increased opportunities for employment and income-generation. Echoversity established a foundation for eco-tourism and regenerative tourism by mapping and marking the transhumance trail – creating opportunities for local communities generally, and breeders in particular to generate income. Supporting Roma micro-entrepreneurs in Albania listed an ability to stimulate local economies through increased employment as one of the evaluation criteria for selecting which micro-enterprises to support.
Other tangible outcomes could be infrastructure (such as the development of a new bicycle lane and bicycle parking in EduMove) or equipment (€1,000 tailored support for local SMEs for Supporting Roma micro-entrepreneurs in Albania; bicycle donation to local school children for EduMove). Here, and in awards and prize ceremonies to recognise good work (InclusivECs awards and Supporting Roma micro-entrepreneurs in Albania) it is important to consider equitable distribution to avoid promoting tensions and further inequities, as discussed under challenges.
Success #8 Providing platforms for ongoing collaboration
In a number of cases, the pilots as a whole, or specific project outputs, provided an important networking role with other CSOs. (Usually online) platforms were thus provided for collaboration and networking, resource-sharing, and highlighting the work of different CSOs. This platforming helps to provide peer support and inspiration between CSOs, but also to provide visibility of their good work to potential future funders.
Thus, for instance, Supporting Roma micro-entrepreneurs in Albania established an informal Coalition of Roma Green Micro-entrepreneurs group for meetings and mutual support. As part of the project, an online platform was also developed to serve as a central hub for resources, opportunities, and communication among coalition members.
Mapko also conducted a comprehensive revamp of its community garden map, adding a host of new community gardens and documenting the closure of others, which significantly enhanced its usability. New features were introduced, including an interactive menu, a comprehensive knowledge bank, and user recognition through special badges, confirming the entity’s status on the platform. In today’s version, the badges are divided into four categories depending on the status and level of maturity of the given garden, providing a superb overview of the state of play in Czechia.
Something similar was done in Uključi se! (Get involved!), where the project team developed a website “Get involved!” that connects informal groups with donors to implement climate projects in local communities. The positive feedback of both companies and informal groups led to a decision to maintain this website after the project ends for at least the next three years – “We see great potential to activate many more young people with more companies and donors that would then open more calls for support.”
Success #9 Public institutionalisation of pilot approaches
What are the crucial conditions making such institutionalisation successful?
Many pilot organisations noted that the long-term sustainability and scaling of impact depends on the engagement of institutionalised actors, like public administrations and policy makers. Pilot projects had some success in engaging municipalities towards the institutionalisation of their approaches (albeit to varying degrees). For example, Dialogue & Action Against Wildfires notes that:
“Local stakeholders have begun discussing ways to integrate the project’s bottom-up approach into municipal civil protection plans, which could lead to greater institutionalisation of community-led disaster risk reduction. These early signs of official endorsement suggest that even though formal budget lines have yet to be established, the pilot action’s methodologies and ethos stand a good chance of being recognised and sustained in future, supposing that some of the community members continue to continuously push forward the political agenda.”
Similarly, Mapko had success engaging not only local communities but also municipalities and developers to establish a collaboration regarding community gardens in the Czech Republic. This resulted in agreements to include community gardens in urban planning, with a memorandum of understanding facilitating green spaces in new residential projects. EduMove, meanwhile, benefited from good relations between the implementing organisation and the local municipality to implement actions like permanent bike lanes and a public campaign with permanent banners.
In contrast, other Pilot projects faced significant difficulty gaining public support, including municipalities (e.g. Todas en bici) and national actors (InclusivECs awards). The burning question from a policy perspective is: What are the crucial conditions making such institutionalisation successful? The following success factors are posited:
- Public priorities and consciousness:
Bottom-up innovations are more likely to be picked up and supported if they are in line with current public priorities and political pressures. It is no surprise, for instance, that the topic of wildfires in Greece found resonance with local politicians, given the level of discourse around the topic. Vice versa, InclusivECs awards clearly struggled simply due to the level of maturity of energy communities in Spain generally, meaning that less public support was forthcoming.
- Windows of opportunity:
Some projects clearly benefit from being the right topic at the right time in relation to current policy agendas (and vice versa). To have political impact it is crucial to link on-going policy processes and priorities, i.e. helping policy makers solve problems they are currently concerned with. Thus, for instance, Food4Schools have done well to link their project (nominally about food in schools) to the highly publicised 100 Climate Neutral Cities Mission, noting how food systems transformation is intimately linked with climate resilience, and linking this to the work of Greek Mission cities – including Thessaloniki, Ioannina, and Kalamata.
- Leveraging existing relationships with political actors
Some of the projects were able to leverage positive relationships between the pilot contacts and the municipalities to push for joined projects (Messinia in Greece, and Tirana/Kamëz in Albania, respectively). Vice versa, the projects are then opportunities to build dialogue and trust for future collaborations. This is compromised whenever there is a lack of personal continuity, as outlined in challenge #8.
Success #10: Facilitating translocal learning & multiplication
A number of Pilot projects had success developing plans & templates that are modular, generalised and process-oriented. This approach supports replication and multiplication, allowing projects and planning to be adapted and/or tailored to other contexts and account for distinct legal frameworks, cultural practices, or geographical constraints – an essential element for translocal learning. Dialogue & Action Against Wildfires ’s Forest Fire Risk Reduction Toolkit is one great example of this and is currently translated to English.
Others explicitly began the hard work of identifying promising NGOs and CSOs who would have interest in collaborating on similar projects in the future. Mapko did this in the context of food gardens in and beyond the Czech Republic (Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, and Bosnia). The project leads suggest starting with regional groupings such as the V4 (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). Doing this through a unified platform such as the Mapko site, will allow for a better understanding of the varying approaches to urban agriculture, legislative frameworks, and socioeconomic conditions, nonetheless fostering collaboration across borders.
Success #11 CSOs as mediators
Lastly, the role of CSOs as mediators between diverse stakeholders was repeatedly emphasised, indicating their value in building trust and lowering transaction costs. This networking role could be with individual stakeholders, but in other cases it was between organisations – a network of CSOs (illustrating the importance of similar organisations like ECOLISE at the EU-wide level).
Supporting Roma micro-entrepreneurs in Albania and Mapko thus for instance helped to provide recognition and a voice for smaller organisations (SMEs and community gardens respectively) who would not have had the size or capacity to do this on their own. Dialogue & Action Against Wildfires similarly acted as a single broker and contact between small, isolated villages with fluctuating populations (summer versus winter) and the public authorities responsible for creation of disaster planning (fire departments, municipalities generally).
In some cases, this was an explicit aim of the project. Thus, Uključi se! (Get involved!) had the core objective of acting as a broker between companies and volunteers/informal groups. The organisation, Young Researchers of Serbia (YRS), thus established a methodology for mentorship and financial support, giving many companies to plan their own CSO work. This was a safer way for the companies to support individual climate ideas because YRS’s co-ordination provided the institutional credibility and organisational skills to lower the risk of working with fully grassroots actors. Through the application and selection methodology, companies could also be sure that selected projects had been adequately vetted.
This trust and brokerage relate not only to reputations but also to legal and financial capacity. For instance, Uključi se! (Get involved!) noted that replication in countries beyond Serbia would require “an umbrella association that can handle the financial weight and be the contact point for smaller organisations on [the] local level that would work directly with the local community.” They highlight that their methodology is invaluable for the involvement and support of informal groups who, as individuals, cannot be supported or held accountable for financial spending through projects and donations. “YRS has therefore created a system that enables them to still do projects and YRS would cover the costs through invoices provided by them in our name. This is due to the legal framework in Serbia, but also in many other countries.”
In other cases, the careful involvement of key multipliers to further this networking potential. PA10 had success in also involving individuals with high multiplier potential in their school volunteering project. For instance, 14 teachers, many of whom will be moved to new schools in Palermo in 2025 – boding well for replication of the project ethos in further regional schools in the future.
This article is part of a three-part series focusing on the successes, challenges and lessons learnt from ACCTING’s pilot projects.
