In March 2026, the city of Porto welcomed 24 youth workers from Portugal, France, Italy, Poland, Greece and Georgia for the Residential International Campus of the YouTransition project. While participants arrived on 9 March and departed on 14 March, the training activities took place between 10 and 13 March, creating four intensive days of learning, collaboration and collective reflection.
Organised within the framework of the Erasmus+ project "Youth Seeds for a Just Transition", the campus became much more than an international training activity. It was a dynamic space where ideas, experiences and perspectives met, allowing critical reflection to merge with creativity, collaboration and collective action.
Residential International Campus · Porto, March 2026
A Three-Stage Process
The residential training in Porto was part of a three-stage process within the YouTransition project:
Online Training
Participants completed the online training covering four chapters: diversity and inclusion (human rights and practices in youth projects), youth participation (civic engagement, public policy and advocacy), just transition (understanding the concept and best practices), and designing projects for just transition (service design tools, creating sustainable services and project management).
Residential Training
The residential training provided an intensive immersion: group work on real-life cases, an introduction to Service Design and Transition Design methods, and an analysis of common challenges at European level.
Local Champions
Following the online and residential training, the aim is for participants to now become local champions: they apply the tools within their organisations, organise workshops and share the methods with other professionals and young people.
The training thus served as a bridge between preparation, experimentation and local action.
Service Design & Transition Design
Throughout the campus, participants deepened their understanding of Service Design and Transition Design methodologies, exploring how these approaches can support the creation of more people-centred, democratic and sustainable services and initiatives.
Through participatory and collaborative activities as well as collective reflection, participants analysed real-life challenges from their local contexts and imagined more equitable and sustainable futures. The programme encouraged them to look beyond immediate problems and better understand the structural dynamics shaping the lives of young people across Europe.
Josh Harvey
Director of Innovation and Scale · Catholic Relief Services · PhD Researcher, Carnegie Mellon University · Founder of Very Green GrassThe training was facilitated by Josh Harvey, whose background as a design, strategy, and innovation leader — helping make sense of complex systems, imagine alternatives, and build and execute the strategies to make the change — made him particularly aligned with the objectives of the YouTransition project.
A Strong Intercultural Dimension
One of the strongest dimensions of the campus was its intercultural environment. Despite their different realities, participants recognised that many challenges related to youth participation and sustainable transition are shared across Europe. The exchange of experiences and perspectives strengthened both mutual learning and the sense of European cooperation.
"Connecting with different people and associations but realizing that part of the problems are common."
"The exchange of ideas and experiences with people from different countries."
Towards Long-Term Local Impact
Beyond the residential experience itself, the activity was designed as a starting point for long-term local impact. Participants are expected to remain actively involved in the next phases of the YouTransition project by disseminating the methodologies and reflections developed during the training and applying them in their own communities.
Particular emphasis will be placed on involving participants in the next steps of the project, namely grassroots events, local workshops and peer-to-peer learning activities, helping to transfer the knowledge acquired into participatory and youth-centred local initiatives.
"Receiving the right tools to work with students and young people."
"I see more clearly how to design a new course or intervention with young people."
The Residential International Campus demonstrated the importance of participatory and transnational learning spaces in building more inclusive, democratic and sustainable futures. Through initiatives like this, the YouTransition project continues to support a new generation of youth workers and changemakers committed to creating fairer communities across Europe.
