D-Effect is an international project implemented under the Interreg South Baltic Programme 2021-2027, which aims to strengthen civil society by actively engaging young people in democratic processes and the lives of local communities. The project is based on the belief that democracy is best learned through action, collaboration, and real impact on the surrounding reality.
In the project, young people are not merely participants in activities, but co-creators. Together with representatives of local governments, social organizations, cultural institutions, and experts, they plan initiatives, conduct dialogue, and co-decide on the directions of action. This approach strengthens a sense of empowerment, develops civic competences, and builds lasting partnerships between young people and adults.
The project's activities form a coherent educational and social process. They begin with Round Tables, during which young people, together with local partners, identify the most important needs and jointly design further initiatives. This is followed by Youth Democracy Festivals – events prepared by young people with the support of adults, providing a space for conversation, collaboration, education, and active participation in public life. A key element of the project is also Live Democracy Lessons, enabling face-to-face meetings with representatives of public administration, European institutions, social organizations, and individuals involved in democratic processes.
The project is international in nature and involves partners from Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania, and Germany. Through cross-border collaboration, participants exchange experiences, learn about different models of democracy, and jointly develop solutions that can be used even after the project's conclusion.
One of the most important outcomes of D-Effect will be the development of practical materials, tools, and recommendations that will help local governments, organizations, and institutions effectively engage young people in social and civic life. The developed method of Youth Democracy Festivals is intended to become a lasting tool supporting the development of civic engagement in the Baltic Sea region and an inspiration for further initiatives across Europe.
D-Effect demonstrates that democracy is not limited to elections or formal procedures. It's about daily collaboration, openness to dialogue, mutual respect, and shared responsibility for the development of local communities. Thanks to the involvement of young people, the project is building the foundations of a conscious, active, and responsible civil society.
How to organize a Youth Democracy Festival and learn the project method – D-Effect Toolbox
Municipalities and urban utility companies provide various services to residents and visitors. Offering these services involves a wide range of fundamental tasks and background operations (e.g., winter road snow removal, repair work on streets and other public infrastructure, maintenance of public spaces, etc.). Many of these activities by municipalities and utilities still rely on the linear economy paradigm, which in turn involves excessive use of - often even raw materials (e.g., sand or gravel for winter road snow removal), which become waste and are disposed of after a single use. The result is relatively high consumption of raw materials and the generation of waste during the provision of municipal services.
Applying circular economy principles to these fundamental tasks and background operations could significantly reduce the environmental impact of providing municipal services in the Southern Baltic area. There are also potential leverage points to reduce raw material consumption and waste production, which lie even within the direct sphere of influence of municipalities and municipal utility companies, for example:
The Circular MuSe project takes a comprehensive and systematic approach to promoting circular economy principles in municipal services across the South Baltic area.
The overall aim of the project is to support municipal enterprises and municipalities in smaller towns and rural areas in adopting a circular approach that promotes the reuse of raw materials in their supply chains, thereby enabling the efficient use of resources in municipal services.
The overarching goal is to increase resource efficiency by minimizing raw material consumption and reducing waste through the reuse of materials in municipal service supply chains.
The project focuses on smaller towns and rural areas, recognizing their unique challenges and opportunities in transitioning to a circular economy.
The project approach is based on three main objectives:
Project activities are grouped into three content-related work packages. The first is dedicated to the creation of the "South Baltic Knowledge Hub on Circular Municipal Services". It includes the development of an open catalog of case studies and available solutions for circular municipal services, the development of a set of modular curricula and mentoring programs for urban utility companies and urban decision-makers, and the establishment of an international network of circular economy experts from R&D institutions. The second work package focuses on the practical implementation and evaluation of innovative circular approaches within municipal services, which involve planning, implementing, and evaluating pilot solutions in technical-organizational practices for providing circular municipal services. The last work package involves educational and mentoring programs for urban utility companies along with international workshops connecting practitioners and researchers.
The target groups of the project are urban utility companies in smaller towns and rural areas, smaller towns and rural municipalities, and associations of municipalities and/or sectoral utility company associations.
The project is concerned with combating various hazardous substances in the aquatic environment in order to increase safety and water quality. There are about 20,000 known military and civilian shipwrecks at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, of which about 10 per cent are a source of contamination from fuels or remnants of sunken munitions. More than 80 years after the Second World War, hazardous fuel is leaking from some of the rusted wrecks (e.g. carcinogenic pyrolytic oil from the ‘Stuttgart’ has already contaminated 40 ha of the Bay of Gdansk). Other wrecks are close to decomposition and need to be carefully monitored to assess the risk and the real threat to marine life and the impediment to a variety of economic activities on the seabed. Decisions on monitoring, clean-up or exclusion of anthropogenic activities in the vicinity of wrecks are extremely slow, as costly and intensive studies are needed in each case.
The BaltWreck initiative believes that the time has come to bring together all relevant marine research institutions, maritime administrations and decision-makers in the region to solve this major transboundary challenge in a methodological, efficient and internationally compliant manner.
The aim of the BaltWreck project is to contribute to the reduction of pollution of the Baltic Sea by ammunition, hazardous fuel and other dangerous shipwreck residues through the joint development, demonstration and implementation of national wreck management programmes.
SCONE - Sustainability Cooperation Network in the South Baltic
The SCONE project continues the work with schools and youth in the field of ecology, building on the GreenUp project. The main focus is on sustainable development curricula in high schools, pro-ecological activities, working with teachers and students, and strengthening extracurricular education. The project aims to fill this critical gap by developing and implementing innovative educational programs that equip youth with the knowledge and skills needed to take meaningful action in the face of the global climate crisis. By fostering a sense of agency and collective responsibility, we aim to inspire and empower future generations to be leaders in combating climate change.
The SCONE project focuses on strengthening cooperation in the Southern Baltic region by addressing climate issues among students through cross-border collaboration. It aims to support cooperation, knowledge exchange, and innovation to promote innovative teaching methods and extracurricular activities. These initiatives will enable students to inspire each other and create regional networks to address global climate challenges locally and regionally. Students will enhance their cross-border collaboration skills by working together on sustainable development issues. Their efforts will be showcased at sustainability camps and hackathons, encouraging active participation in tackling climate challenges. The project recognizes the crucial role of schools and teachers in creating meaningful challenges that inspire and offer both learning potential and action opportunities. Teachers will play a key role in facilitating and supporting young people's educational activities while allowing them the freedom to develop their own initiatives.
The outcome of the project will be the creation of a network of organizations with enhanced cooperation capacity. These organizations will work together to promote sustainable development using a holistic approach that involves the entire school. High school teachers and teacher training colleges will increase their capacity to collaborate by focusing on education for sustainable development as a teaching practice.
The main objective of the project is to develop cooperation to strengthen the potential of the Baltic Sea region through the use of the resources of historical institutions, cultural institutions and the protection of national heritage, both local, state and private assets, as well as local and regional entities of formal and informal groups of enthusiasts and NGOs. The project aims to make the resources (natural, historical, cultural) of the Baltic Sea region's heritage more attractive.
The project is also concerned with strengthening the cohesion of the macro-region with the use of cultural heritage aimed at the sustainable development of the regions through the implementation of instruments affecting the respect of tangible and intangible cultural assets and facilitating access to their cognition with the help of remote tools.
The project is a response to the need to learn about the world in a more accessible way in unpredictable times, when historical objects are available today and access to them may not be possible tomorrow. In the project, we want to use creative industries based on large-format scanners to digitize objects that will enable the long-term preservation of the heritage of collaborating regions and the creation of living history lessons. We envision extensive cooperation with creative industries, such as information technology, graphic design and advertising. Only the combination of traditional and creative industries can bring the expected results, such as:
The project is a partnership action addressing the problems of situations related to the existence of barriers (obstacles) that hinder the achievement of the intended objectives in increasing the number of visitors to the area of Warmia and Mazury and deeper Pomerania and partner regions. In terms of recognition, Pomerania is mainly known as the Tri-City metropolitan area with the region's capital of Gdansk standing out, followed by Sopot and Gdynia and the Hel and Vistula Spit, to the exclusion of other geopolitical micro-areas (Kashubian Lake District, Powiśle, Kociewie, part of the Tuchola Forest). In contrast, the Warmia-Mazury region is little known to a large proportion of foreign tourists. The region's potential is not fully exploited and made available to a wide audience, and hence the need to disseminate the national asset in a more accessible way.
We face the same situation when we talk about recognizing the national heritage of our neighbors, such as those from Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. With this project, we want to popularize national goods, bring about the creation of a platform of contacts and tighten the bonds of cooperation. So that what was previously unattainable, because little known, becomes recognizable and close to the visitors of the regions cooperating in the project.
The overall goal of the project is to develop strong partnerships of SB institutions and organizations that will work together to develop and test methods to introduce innovative and socially inclusive solutions for water and sailing specialization in area of education, awareness-raising, which enable to create conditions for development of sustainable water tourism services.
The main objective is to strengthen the water economy potential of the participating areas through better use and management of surface and seawater resources, around which we want to develop social activities, range of activities such as: education, environmental safety and tourism, and economic offer giving them a high potential for innovation.
An important factor in the development of the water specialization is the basic education and activation of the water economy environment, including variety of actors (politicians, education bodies, scientific and research institutions, entrepreneurs and tourism organization’s inhabitants). This will allow to create of a multispectral and multi-faceted offer that meets the needs of si\sustainable tourism and environmental protection, in which the participating sub-activities want to achieve international relevance.
The aim is to map, analyze available resources, methods techniques, existing strategies and best practices in the field of building water-related specialization of Baltic Sea actors in order to strengthen and create a strong movement for the restoration and development of maritime traditions of South Baltic cities and regions. The role of the seed money project will be able to initiate joint local cooperation with a pro-active function - uniting different stakeholders, tools and communities in order to increase the functionality and involvement in improving the tourism and education offer of organizations in the South Baltic area.
PROJECT BRIEF
Project area: Increasing the development of natural resources and cultural monuments of the Baltic Sea Region into sustainable tourist destinations
Project scope: South Baltic Region
Role of STG ERB: Partner with own budget
Level of funding 85%
Project budget: 40.000 EUR
STG ERB budget: 10.750 EUR
Project consortium: 3 partners from Poland, 1 partner from Lithuania, 1 partner from Sweden
The overall goal of the project is to create strong partnerships that work together to develop and test methods for introducing nature-based solutions in markets. Implementation of a future regular project will increase the use of green technologies in cities and locally solve the problem of pollution and waste generated by markets. The seed money project will be used to identify city partners for the target project, locate problem areas and create an outline plan for research and projects, for future implementation.The goal of the seed money project is to develop four “teams” researching and implementing pilot solutions in four different locations. Each team will consist of at least two partners, including:
Public markets play an important role in European cities. They are places of trade with a potential to become places of sustainable consumption, inclusiveness and environmental transformation. This potential is already recognised by international organisations and individual municipalities (notably cities of Barcelona and London) across Europe. However, it still remains untapped in many areas, especially in Central and Eastern European cities of the SB region. Markets in cities from Central and Eastern Europe have their own set of particularities resulting from their geographical location (climate), they are often localised in central parts of city districts, offer direct access to local produce and are important meeting places. At the same time, they are places that are very often heavily concreted, with little architectural value and devoid of greenery. They are often a source of surface runoff with various origins as well as pollution content resulting from heavy pedestrian and road traffic and trade activities. Despite common characteristics of markets, there is a need to develop solutions that suit their individual needs based on the site-specific issues. We see the current situation not only as a chance to regenerate public markets but also to introduce new vital functions transforming them into spaces rejuvenating neighbourhoods. The project seeks to tackle the potential of urban markets to become catalysts for environmental change. The overall objective of the project is to establish strong partnerships that cooperate to develop and test methods to introduce nature based solutions in markets. Implementation of the future regular project will increase the use of green technologies in cities and address the issue of pollution and waste generated by markets locally. The seed money project will serve to identify municipal partners for the target project, locate problem areas and create an outline of a research and project plan, to be implemented in the future.
Project area: Increased use of green technologies in order to decrease the pollution discharges in the South Baltic area
Project scope: South Baltic area
The role of STG ERB: Partner with own budget
Co-financing rate 85%
Project budget: 40.000 EUR
STG ERB budget: 5.500 EUR
Project consortium: 3 partners from Poland, 1 partner from Lithuania, 1 partner from Germany, 1 partner from Denmark