BioBeo.eu has organised a festival to invite a young audience from all over Europe to celebrate and learn about the bioeconomy. For this, the project joined with project GenB and the Bioeconomy Youth Ambassadors appointed by the EC in participating in a Bioeconomy Festival under the auspices of the European Commission in Brussels in March 2024.

On March 15, the BioBeo bioeconomy festival took place on the Brussels campus of Odisee University of Applied Sciences. It was organised by the partners Maynooth, STICHTING HOGESCHOOL ROTTERDAM and ODISEE. The festival aimed to bring bioeconomy closer to education and was created with the support of the European Commission. The Five BioBeo themes provided a structure for this input to the Festival from BioBeo. University Maynooth developed educational resources based on the BioBeo themes relevant to preschool and primary level while STICHTING HOGESCHOOL ROTTERDAM and ODISEE did the same for secondary level.

An event in light of the EU Bioeconomy Changemakers Festival

The ‘Bioeconomy Changemakers Festival’ was organised by the European Commissionin cooperation with the Bioeconomy Youth Ambassadors, and was be accompanied by independent satellite events all over Europe – BioBeo was one of them. The Festival aimed to engage youth as drivers of the transformative change required in view of the multiple challenges that Europe faces today, and to unlock the potential of the bioeconomy to make the transformation happen. In addition, the Festival aimed to help the European Commission to gather views on an update of the Bioeconomy Strategy and Action Plan.

A day full of activities and excitement

Various workshops and lectures took place at the bioeconomy festival. Secondary school students learned, among other things, how to grow mushrooms on coffee grounds or were immersed in the beauty of forests through an art installation, in collaboration with the organisations as PermaFungi and BOS+ respectively.

A number of officials from the European Commission attended aswell.

The BioBeo festival marks an innovative step in bioeconomy education. Bart Hempen, BioBeo project coordinator for Odisee University of Applied Sciences, emphasizes: “The aim of this project and festival is to bring the bioeconomy closer to education and thus involve young people in sustainable initiatives.” Horizon Europe” – which finances BioBeo – helps to develop and implement European partnerships.

Led by Maynooth University, it was decided to advertise the BioBeo festival as a ‘circular sustainable fashion festival’ whereby the participants and facilitators would be invited to wear old clothes, clothes purchased in their local charity shops, or clothes made specifically using sustainable materials. Dr Máire Nic an Bhaird and Dr Laoise Ní Chléirigh were tasked with interviewing attendees regarding their sartorial choices and they were posted on the BioBeo Instagram page to draw attention to this novel and innovative idea.

If you are interested in details, you can read all about the festival here: https://www.biobeo.eu/festival/

Keywords

Bioeconomy, Youth, Teenager, Children, Future, Development, Sustainability, Challenge, Competition, Citizen Engagement, Forestry, Water, Interconnectedness, Outdoor Learning

In the past half year, SYNYO and the respective academic partners have transitioned from desk-based to field research. Two additional CSO partners per country have been attracted to collaborate in the research. First, academic partners conducted research with each CSO who in addition served as contact points to gain access to migrant women who benefit from their services. Thus, research with migrant women on their conceptualizations of gender empowerment has started as well. Lastly, during the second consortium meeting, which the Italian partners hosted in Rovereto, future steps of the project have been discussed.

Our Latest Research Activities

If you have followed up on ReIncluGen, you will know that in the first year the consortium partners successfully refined the qualitative methodology, conducted research on the policies promoting gender equality across the five case studies – Austria, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Spain – and analysed overall attitudes towards gender equality in the respective countries. Thereby, the groundwork has been laid out on which we can now build our own original empirical research. In this regard, SYNYO supported by the other Austrian consortium partner Orient Express, was able to effectively recruit further civil society organisations (CSOs) to gain access to migrant women, the social counsellors and teachers working with these women. The organisations all aim towards empowering women by increasing the women’s German language skills, general as well as country-specific knowledge, and fostering their independence.

Furthermore, the chosen organisations will remain anonymous, in order to safeguard the privacy of the women visiting their activities. The organisations, however, reflect a part of Vienna’s CSO landscape, offering women language courses, information workshops, legal counselling, therapy and simply a safe space. Most of the women visiting one of these organisations are mainly first-generation migrants, coming from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria. SYNYO decided to use translators to allow the women to speak in their mother tongue, increase their trust in the project and guarantee an in-depth understanding of the topic on both sides.

From September onwards SYNYO has conducted thorough fieldwork which will continue into the first quarter of 2024:

• Three focus group discussions with staff working at the CSOs to better understand the way they conceptualize gender empowerment and inclusion and how this is reflected in their work, what activities they provide and which of these are deemed effective and why.
• Three focus group discussions with the women visiting the respective CSOs. We aim to interview approximately six women per discussion.
• 20 points of observation per CSO to observe how their activities are carried out, how the staff interacts with each other, with the women and how the women interact with each other as well.
• 30 photo-voice interviews with ten women per CSO. Each photo-voice interview consists of three points in time, the first in which the declaration of consent is discussed as well as the women’s life trajectories and definitions of gender empowerment. The second will provide time for discussing the photos the women took and why they are important to them and the last session will encourage the women to reflect on the whole interview process and photo-taking.

So far, SYNYO has conducted ten full photo-voice interviews and two first-sessions. Three focus group discussions were held, one with the clients of Orient Express and two with the staff of two of our CSO partners. Observations have been ongoing as well, leading up to almost 35 points of contact by the end of the year across all three CSOs. Transcriptions of the interviews and focus group discussions have begun, and will be used to analyse the written data via the program MaxQDA.

Focus points of the analysis are the women’s life trajectories, how their life has changed due to their migration, how they perceive “being a woman” to have influenced their life’s course, their view of the CSO’s work and their understanding of gender empowerment. This content analysis serves as a basis for the country report of each partner country and will then feed into the deliverable of this work package, the comparative report, led by the Spanish university partners. The photos, the women have taken in the course of the interview, will be made public and shared via a travelling and local photo-exhibition as well as a photobook. Each woman was invited to submit at least one photo with a brief quote on what it signifies for her in the context of gender empowerment and generally being a woman.

Further Developments & Future Milestones

From the 27^th to the 29^th of September the 2^nd consortium meeting was held in Rovereto, Italy. The meeting gave the consortium members the possibility to discuss their respective experiences with conducting fieldwork with and within the CSOs, plus how the CSOs perceived the research and what the research could offer the CSOs in return. Here, the development of the digital platform is of major relevance, as it aims to be used by CSOs and is therefore built based on the needs and desires of the respective CSOs.

Another discussion point was the photovoice art exhibition and the photo and essay book. Concrete plans were made for the schedule of the travelling exhibition, the selection process of photos, and the format of the exhibition and the photobook.

We look forward to accomplishing many more milestones and creating outputs in 2024. Thus, if you don’t want to miss out and instead continuously stay up-to-date on current activities, visit our blog and our output section on the ReIncluGen website.

Links

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/projects/reinclugen/news-activities/

Keywords

migration, women, gender equality, gender empowerment, focus group discussions, CSO