Overview of the project

Carried out by ACJE, the “Desire to Act (Envie d’agir)” project consists of encouraging, supporting, and enhancing young peoples’ capacity for initiative and their commitment and participation in the life of the city, focused on an environmental and protection of resources theme.

Desire to Act provides pedagogical, technical, and material support to accompany young people from the emergence to the effective realisation of their ideas. Based upon the natural tendency of youth to live in groups, the system proposed by the ACJE project contributes to positively orienting young peoples’ influence on each other, offering everyone the opportunity to develop their capabilities. Working together on the basis of their already acquired individual skills and each individual’s talents and experiences, they contribute to the development of a real team spirit in which everyone supports each other. In this way, young people learn how to transition from the small to larger community.

The values of respect, equality, autonomy, and solidarity are no longer limited to the family’s inner circle but are becoming universal. All the project’s actions will be carried out for young people; this specific approach aims to respond as best as possible to their aspirations while enabling them to collectively build, through their commitment, cultural practices resembling them. This also allows young people to experience complex processes of participation, representation, decision-making, and negotiation, all of which are dynamics which through experimentation develops youth who are critical; assertive in relation to values, a cause, or an ideal; responsible; accountable for their own actions; and committed to complete what they undertake.