ABCD Innovation Center

Through the Surviving in the Concrete Jungle project, ABCD Innovation Center is part of a European consortium exploring how urban spaces can become places of learning, participation, and change.

Across Germany, Poland, Italy, Georgia, and Armenia, we are working together to rethink outdoor education — moving beyond forests and mountains into the realities of the cities we live in every day.

🏙️ Cities are not just infrastructure.
They are spaces of inequality, opportunity, identity, and power.

Our cities are where most of life happens 🏙️ Yet we rarely learn how to truly experience or understand them. Through this project, we bring outdoor and adventure education into urban spaces 🌿 Creating opportunities for young people to explore, question, and engage with the environments around them. We believe cities can become spaces of learning, connection, and transformation ✨ Not just places we pass through. What kind of city do you want to be part of shaping? 👀 #UrbanEducation #ConcreteJungle #YouthWork #ErasmusPlus #OutdoorLearning

🌱 Empowering Local Change Actors – Training Phase Begins
This week we held the first online training session with the women change actors identified through the Connectors and Dividers Assessment within the WE: Connect – Connect. Empower. Transform. project.
The project is implemented by ABCD Innovation Center with the support of GIZ.
A total of 20 women from participating 8 communities will take part in a four-week online capacity-building programme, designed to strengthen their skills.
📚 The first session focused on Project Design, Planning, and Implementation, providing participants with practical tools to turn community ideas into structured and impactful initiatives.
👏 The training was facilitated by Stepan Shoyan.
Over the coming weeks, participants will continue building their knowledge through additional online sessions. In April, they will meet offline to apply their newly gained skills and collaboratively design community projects that promote social inclusion and gender-sensitive initiatives in their communities.
At ABCD Innovation Center, we believe that strong communities are built when local actors are empowered to lead change.
Power to the people.

*This measure is implemented by ABCD Innovation Center within the framework of the Women Empowerment for Wellbeing (WoW) project commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.”

🌍 WE: Connect — Assessment Phase in Progress

Since October, the ABCD Innovation Center team has been working across 8 consolidated communities to carry out the first major phase of the WE: Connect – Connect. Empower. Transform. project:
the participatory community needs and connectors/dividers assessment.

Using a mix of focus group discussions, key informant interviews, community mapping sessions, and field observations, we are bringing together diverse voices — youth, women, active citizens, civil society groups, and municipal representatives — to understand:

✔️ What are the community’s shared strengths and aspirations?
✔️ What challenges and barriers shape everyday life?
✔️ Which connectors strengthen cohesion and which dividers need to be addressed?
✔️ Where local actors see opportunities for cooperation and empowerment?

This assessment is not just data collection — it is the foundation for inclusive, community-driven micro-initiatives that will be designed in early 2026.

We are grateful to every resident, partner, and stakeholder who has opened their doors, shared perspectives, and helped shape a collective vision for stronger, more resilient communities.

📅 The assessment phase will conclude by the end of December, with results informing the next steps of capacity building and project co-creation.

This measure is implemented by ABCD Innovation Center within the framework of the Women Empowerment for Wellbeing (WoW) project commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.”