Green Laboratory is an initiative that will effectively use the means existing in order to analyze the situations, gather the knowledge, adapt to the specific situation and create set of tackle that will solve the problem. Short term thinking caused so many problems in all the mentioned parties in the respected countries and moved them away from reaching people with green idea. The goal of this initiative is focus on the long-term development and make sure that the future generation have all it takes to make a change in their party.  

Many times the knowledge gained from national or international cooperation gets lost and transfer has been weak; “it is hard to build the tower if you don’t know how to start and what tools to use”. This is exactly what Green lab aims to be: a knowledge centre that can provide the specific tools for specific situations and be a sort of guideline for avoiding the mistakes and planning clearly ahead. 

It is not realistic that before 2010 there can be a significant success of the greens in Eastern Europe. Even though it will be possible that some seats will be reached, without a ground knowledge and “hearts” based in the green ideology, there is a high risk of failing to make the right decisions once elected. 

Coordination and Development Network Eastern Europe (CDN), the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) and the European Confederation of Youth Clubs (ECYC) gathered together to put their knowledge of the management and organisation of international youth projects and the result of this co-operation is a publication entitled ”Project Supplies – Manual on Project Management”. This publication is part of Green Lab project.

In addition to the Manual, the publication contains a Work Book, which was developed to be used as a tool to follow one’s own work during a project and it is aimed at prep team members and trainers. The publication was realised with the support of the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe and the Green Forum, Sweden.

The idea for the project was first raised by the former Secretary General of FYEG and Network Coordinator of CDN, Aleksandar Jovanovic, who says that the idea for this project came as a response to a need to build up cultural, organisational and managerial knowledge that would be a great base for future members of preparatory groups.

The goal of this publication was to sum-up the knowledge, experience and practical advices of realising a project and to create concrete a guideline manual that will help the new generation of youth activists not to “invent the wheel again” but to have the base that can be further built.“The change of generations in the International Youth Organisations is inevitable and quite fast in many cases leading to the loss of knowledge base and know-how.

In order to make youth work sustainable it is therefore important to prevent this loss and create tools and methods that will support the transfer of knowledge and experiences from one generation to the other”, says Jovanovic, holding a brand new copy of the “Project Supplies” manual proudly in his hands.In addition to Aleksandar Jovanovic, the publication was written by Maarten Coertjens, Natalie Debono, Annina Hirvonen, Ilze Jece and Ska Keller, who are all long-term activists in youth work.