Europe Challenge 2025/2026 (up to EUR 10,000) – YOA

Deadline: May 29, 2025

Applications are open for the Europe Challenge 2025/2026. The Europe Challenge is an annual programme that brings collectively groups from libraries and communities throughout Europe to deal with urgent social, digital, and local weather challenges. Libraries are invited to develop, share, and implement artistic options with assist from the European Cultural Foundation and its companions by way of an open name.

The Europe Challenge is a novel rising community of European libraries that work collectively to improve democratic participation and social and environmental nicely-being by way of citizen-led native change by connecting with one another throughout European borders.

Priority Topics

The Europe Challenge 2025/26 is searching for initiatives that deal with a number of of Europe’s key transitions: social, digital, and inexperienced. They are on the lookout for artistic concepts from libraries and neighborhood teams that contribute to constructing a extra inclusive, linked, and sustainable Europe.

• Social: Initiatives that strengthen social inclusion, equality, energetic citizenship, and neighborhood wellbeing. This consists of initiatives that assist weak or underrepresented teams, deal with low voter turnout, promote civic engagement and democratic participation, deal with points reminiscent of inequality and polarisation, or give attention to points reminiscent of social isolation, psychological well being challenges, declining literacy expertise and studying habits, or intergenerational divides.
• Digital: Initiatives that improve European digital citizenship by selling ways, expertise, and behaviors that allow people to have interaction with digital content material critically and democratically. These initiatives ought to foster extra significant interplay and proactive democratic engagement within the digital area. This consists of efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation, bridge digital divides, and encourage secure and accountable use of expertise and social media. They are particularly focused on initiatives that foster digital literacy amongst younger folks, deal with points like pretend information, and deal with challenges arising from speedy AI developments.
• Green: Initiatives that promote environmental sustainability, local weather consciousness, and resilience inside libraries and communities. This consists of initiatives centered on environmental schooling, sustainable practices, and neighborhood-led local weather motion. They notably welcome artistic inexperienced/local weather tasks carried out on the bottom, from neighborhood gardens to putting in beehives round library areas.

Benefits

The programme affords taking part libraries and neighborhood teams the next alternatives:

• Funding of up to EUR 10,000 to implement a proposed undertaking (non-obligatory).
• A sequence of on-line and in-individual workshops and mentoring periods.
• Additional peer-to-peer trade alternatives, networking, and journey.

Eligibility

• The application have to be submitted by two co-candidates: a consultant from a library and a consultant from a neighborhood group from an eligible nation with a shared imaginative and prescient of how to change their neighborhood for the higher.
• The library and neighborhood group have recognized an area social, digital, or environmental problem, and are prepared to flip their thought right into a sensible resolution that may be shared throughout their very own locality and internationally.
• Not each co-candidates want to be registered as a authorized entity. However, at the least one of many co candidates have to be registered as a authorized entity.
• Both co-candidates have to be represented by people who’re at the least 18 years previous.

Selection Criteria

In addition to addressing one of many three precedence subjects (social, digital, inexperienced), proposals from Challenge groups will likely be chosen in accordance to the next choice standards:

• Local relevance – the proposal addresses an pressing problem for each the library and the area people. Additional involvement of native authorities or different native establishments is inspired however not obligatory.
• Creativity – the proposal presents recent, artistic, and modern methods to deal with an area problem.
• Inclusivity – the proposal displays the shared ambitions of the library staff and neighborhood members.
• Scalability – the proposal is carried out domestically however with the potential to be scaled elsewhere.
• Climate sustainability – the proposal embodies a convincing understanding of truthful and inexperienced (“just”) transition in Europe.
• European relevance – the proposal complies with European values of democracy, transparency, and inclusivity. It contributes to a constructive European sentiment and solidarity concerning shared social, digital, and inexperienced challenges.
• Impact – the proposal is in a position to clarify (and quantify) the way it can have a constructive affect on folks and/or the surroundings (trans)domestically.

Application

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to Europe Challenge.