Erasmus+ Youth Accreditation

With its Erasmus+ Youth accreditation, Buinho stopped depending on one-off applications and now has a mobility project every year to train youth workers and run youth exchanges. The aim is to improve support for young people in rural areas and to give youth workers — from Alentejo and the rest of Europe, especially from FabLabs and makerspaces — training in digital fabrication, repair and the circular economy that rarely reaches low-density areas.

The first year (2022–2023) trained 26 youth workers in Messejana around e-waste; the following year, the theme was repair. Study visits to Resialentejo opened the collaboration that led to the Repair Cafés with the inter-municipal company. This project received the Erasmus+ Good Practice label.

In the following years training was decentralised — Messejana, Aljustrel, Ferreira do Alentejo and Castro Verde — with municipal youth workers and international participants, including eight Ukrainian youth workers in 2024. In 2025 the theme was citizen sensing, using the method developed in Youth Sensing. The youth exchanges took place in Castro Verde, with the Municipality and FabLab Mérida, and prepared the Sentir Europa project. In 2026, for the first time, the exchange took place in Messejana, with young people from Messejana and Aljustrel.

• 2022–2023: 26 youth workers trained
• 2023–2024: 45 youth workers in four municipalities and a youth exchange in Castro Verde
• 2024–2025: 42 youth workers and a youth exchange in Castro Verde (July 2025)
• 2026: first youth exchange in Messejana

Partners

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