The Trashycle project was born during a creative brainstorming by Sosped (FL), TransfoLAB (ES) and CoLab House (GR), three organizations from the Mental Health sector, the Creative sector and the Youth Work sector, who decided to explore the positive effects of circular economy and the maker movement on the mental health of the youth.

During this project, TransfoLAB BCN initially designed a pilot program of capacity building and problem-solving activities for affected youth, called “Creative Making through circular economy for wellbeing”, aiming to alleviate mental health and exclusion risks through methods that involve circular, social, participatory economy and the maker movement.

Following this stage, we held a pilot program with the involvement of the youth beneficiaries from Culture House Virta in Tampere (Finland), to test the process developed and verify that it offers education on the emerging topics mentioned above, while it also stimulates and inspires engagement in collaborative activities that increase confidence in making a social impact.

Finally, the program was reviewed and evaluated by a number of relevant organizations in Athens, with the intention to receive valuable feedback, revise our methodology and produce an effective, robust, and flexible program.

As our ultimate purpose is to allow every interested organization to implement the final comprehensive and robust program , we created open source guidline, tutorials and templates that are available online. The partners organised dissemination events in Tampere (SSYK seminar on October 2023 and dissemination event in Culture House Virta in February 2024), Barcelona (Tallers Oberts in October 2023 and TrashTalks Volume 3 - Well-being through design and fabrication in November 2023) and Athens (Meet and Greet in February 2024). We hope that youth organizations will implement our program to inspire and guide affected young people to actively participate in their societies by working on global challenges, such as climate change, through local collaborative activities based on creativity, circular economy and the maker movement.

The feedback from the participants showed that mental health and wellbeing of the participants can be positively impacted by the program, while at the same time they gained useful knowledge in sustainable design, collaborative production and important green skills. These new skills can be used for future (self)employment opportunities, with some of the affected youths already putting those skills in practice after the completion of the project.

The feedback from the youth workers was that it enables them to introduce innovative, creative and quality activities in their organizations, opening the way to the recognition of youth work.

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