International Partnerships: The strategic benefits of cross-border collaborations, and how they inspire the creation and dissemination of knowledge to support the greening of VET.
On Thursday 30 June 2022 the ETF hosted the second of six thematic webinars as part of its programme, ETF Network for Excellence (ENE) and GRETA - Greening Responses to Excellence Through Thematic Actions. The meeting, chaired by Susanne M. Nielsen, ETF’s expert leading GRETA, was a unique opportunity to profile some of the exciting developments taking place in Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) from across the ENE-GRETA network, and highlighted examples of curricula innovation and best practice. The message was loud and clear – the strategic benefits of international partnerships allow us to adapt better and faster, helping VET providers to meet the twin digital and green transitions by promoting green skills to students.
Susanne M. Nielsen, ETF’s expert leading GRETA
GRETA, an initiative started in 2021 involving 17 CoVEs from the ENE network from 8 different countries, has now entered its second phase of implementation, proposing six thematic sessions on green issues that are of particular importance to VET providers. Susanne extended a warm welcome to the many participants from Africa, the EU and the EU’s neighbouring countries and, in particular, to colleagues from Ukraine, emphasising that it “was an honour to have you with us today”.
The meeting kicked off with a keynote speech from Dana Redford, an internationally-recognised expert on the internationalisation of CoVEs. As the Founder and President of PEEP, an NGO supporting evidence-based policy-making in research, education and innovation as part of the twin digital and green transitions, Dana’s presentation answered some of the fundamental questions concerning international partnerships in CoVEs.
Dana Redford, PEEP
Why, How and Who?
Speaking about the success of GRETA so far, Dana commented that “it has been a great process, where we have had some wonderful exchanges and virtual visits and these exchanges are key to international partnerships”. The foundations of internationalisation begin in the classroom, with the “internationalisation of the mindset” of both students and teachers, working upwards through to regional and national levels.
The role of VET institutions is not only to help students to open their eyes but to "put on the lenses of opportunity recognition as well as the lenses of internationalisation and international partnerships”.
Encouraging mobility programmes for teachers and students to support knowledge exchange, and creating knowledge triangles with institutions, multinationals and research centres/governments is a key way to internationalise students and institutions. In response to the question of why we should be looking to internationalise, Dana explained that it is the opportunity to connect to international good practices and encourages excellence and innovation as well as funding opportunities from the EU and other organisations.
In the context of the European Green Deal, which lays out how the EU can reach its green and sustainable ambitions by 2030, Dana emphasised that international partnerships stimulate an interconnectedness that leaders of organisations and institutions should embrace “in order to manage the accelerating shift towards sustainability”. Making use of resources such as the ETF’s Open Space community portal, can provide both inspiration and knowledge share, and is a great way to connect with, and search for, partners.
The twin digital and green competency frameworks, referred to as DigComp and GreenComp respectively, go hand in hand to empower young people and organisations.
Dana believes that “if you don’t have the dual transition as part of your strategy then you don’t have a strategy that reflects the needs of students or your educational institution’s needs and therefore cannot connect fully with internationalisation”.
Addressing the ‘how’ of internationalisation, Dana highlighted the strategic approaches necessary and gave examples of models of cooperation including the importance of actively involving all key stakeholders. The ‘who’ of internationalisation saw Dana list some of the key institutions including the ETF and the JRC as examples of experienced partners.
Opening the dialogue on the ETF’s Open Space
Thanking Dana for his presentation, Susanne took the opportunity to underscore the importance of partnerships.
“It’s about people meeting and getting connected, reaching out and finding each other, and the GRETA pages on the ETF Open Space can be a great option”.
On this last point, Susanne handed over to Susie Howells from the ETF Communications team who encouraged all community members to use Open Space to write blogs, share information and interact with GRETA content to learn from each other and share success stories and examples of best practice.
The only constant is change!
Andreas Bjerre Lunkeit, Expert at the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) facilitated the second part of the meeting focused on best practice sharing and handed the floor to Adrijana Hodak, Head of Intercompany Training at the Solski Centre, Nova Gorica (Slovenia). As one of the ENE CoVEs, Adrijana presented “The importance of international networks for greening”. The centre covers technical programmes of mechanical engineering, computer science, electronics, agriculture and horticulture. As one of the first zero-energy school buildings in the world, the school is a member of EUproVET, the European association of VET providers, which gives the school a voice on green policies at the European Union level as well as the opportunity to speak about what is happening at the grassroots level. Other international partnerships include Praline Erasmus+ KA3, a project which addresses the sustainable development goals and what they mean for VET and adult education. “It is so important for us to share best practice, focusing specifically on peer learning activities…and to raise awareness of green issues” said Adrijana.
Focusing on climate change issues, Adrijana highlighted another of the projects in partnership with Italy where they installed cross-border weather stations. “Here, we give more and more opportunities to learners and teachers to work in an experiential learning context, learning by doing, to help look for the solutions for our future”. Adrijana went on to highlight the plethora of international initiatives in which the Solski centre is involved, including Talent journey, the network of CoVEs practitioners which is an invaluable source of peer learning and best practice, the GRETA network, Learning Labs and Unesco-Unevoc community, bridging innovation and learning in TVET.
“All our partnerships are so important and the only constant is change...international partnerships are not just important, but essential for finding green solutions”.
Andreas Bjerre Lunkeit, DTI (Denmark)
Adrijana Hodak, Solski Centre (Slovenia)
Next to speak was Zeynep Dereli, Founder & CEO of TINK Technology and Humanity Colleges in Turkey. The school, which aims to redress the perception of vocational education as a poor relation to university education, offers a holistic educational programme starting at kindergarten through to Grade 12 that has digital, innovation, inclusion and interconnectedness at its core. Addressing the problem that in Turkey children often progress to university without understanding their skills and passions, Zeynep underscored the importance of the student-parent-teacher collaboration. “We work with parents and students to make sure the students aren’t just choosing to go to university to, in effect, postpone their unemployment by another 4 years which is something we see time and time again in Turkey”. Zeynep went on to talk about the social emotional learning offered by the school as a way to help reduce depression among students. “Depression is caused because you don’t know what you want to do with your life and because you’ve never been given a choice…we want to give our students the opportunity to work out their true selves”. With regard to internationalisation, the school has had 8 Erasmus+ projects and “places a lot of importance on cultivating wonderful networks across Europe from Spain, Italy to Holland and Denmark.” Ending on the benefits of international partnerships, Zeynep highlighted that
“our solution to a VET training space, specifically aimed at developing a modern approach to know-how, is the Tink online Learning Platform and training content that can be used by members of the ETF network”.
Zeynep Dereli, TINK Technology and Humanity Colleges (Turkey)
This first part of the meeting finished with Adrijana emphasising the positive impact curricula changes and learning environments have had on students today in comparison to ten years ago. “Talking with students, they have strong values and they have their ideas as to how it could be better and so they are very well placed to manage this green transition”. She continued, “they have an awareness of how they need to work together to find the solutions for the future, and they are full of ideas and creativity”. Also recognising the vital role of teachers in the learning process Arijana acknowledged that “the teachers are the ones who will need to respond to the students’ needs, to know what needs to be given to them and leadership is therefore also very important as it will enable the teachers to address those needs”.
ENE and internationalisation
Moving on to explore in more detail what ENE brings to international cooperation, ETF’s Content Coordinator for ENE, José-Manuel Galvin Arribas took the floor. “ENE is a unique worldwide partnership on VET excellence which now has 255 CoVEs from 41 countries – 175 CoVEs from ETF partner countries, 72 from EU member states, 29 from sub-Saharan Africa and a new member from South Asia, the Philippines”. This network allows members “to learn from each other and to work together” and has the added advantage of allowing institutions to be recognised and have increased international visibility, and to self-assess as an institution using the ETF’s self-assessment tool for accreditation purposes. José-Manuel emphasised the four main ENE areas of operation, namely Inclusive VET Excellence, Cooperation and Partnerships, Commercialisation and Development (staff, students and policy) and noted that internationalisation cannot be underestimated.
“Working with our colleagues in DG-EMPL we understand the importance of the interaction between working with international to local and local to international…and understanding the importance of mutual peer-learning, co-creation and innovation…”.
GRETA, as one of the flagship initiatives of the ENE, is one of the ten thematic approaches which aim to highlight excellence across a broad range of areas including Pedagogy and Professional Development, Career Guidance in VET Excellence and Excellence in Life Long Learning (LLL).
At the centre of all approaches is the self-assessment tool which enables CoVEs to assess their status in each area: foundational stage, developmental stage or mature stage. Summing up, José-Manuel reflected on the importance of networks in the context of ENE.
“They are vital knowledge tools for managing complexity, boosting cooperation, improving individual and collective capacities…for motivating ourselves and giving our best to others”.
José-Manuel Galvin Arribas, ETF’s Content Coordinator for ENE
Susanne reminded all meeting participants to visit the ENE landing page on Open Space for more information (https://openspace.etf.europa.eu/pages/ene-green-partnership-greening-vet-greta).
Celebrating 35 years of Erasmus +
Moving on, Susanne handed over to Mafalda Santos, from the EC VET Unit, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion to discuss funding opportunities as part of the Erasmus + programme. Mafalda started off by thanking the ETF for its efforts to disseminate good practices and foster international collaborations in VET around the world and confirmed “they were essential and very much appreciated”.
VET is seen as a key ingredient to achieving the green transition but also to fight unemployment and reduce labour shortages in the labour markets by closing the skills gap. Mafalda added “that is why we have several funding opportunities to support projects that share our vision”.
2022 marks the 35th anniversary of Erasmus+ for education, training, youth and sport. Focusing on the 2nd Key Action of the Erasmus + programme, Cooperation among organisations and institutions, Mafalda outlined the priorities for the current funding opportunities as being Inclusion and Diversity, Digital Transformation, Environment and Fight Against Climate Change, and Participation in democratic life, common values and civic engagement. Mafalda proceeded to provide detailed information about the relevant calls and funding opportunities. More details on this can be found at the following link Erasmus+ Programme Guide | Erasmus+ (europa.eu)
Mafalda Santos, EC VET Unit, DG EMPL
Read all about it!
Giulia Meschino, Director and Secretary General of the European Vocational Training Association (www.EVTA.eu) was next to present the VENHANS project, an initiative currently funded by the Erasmus + programme. EVTA’s objectives are to promote VET quality and Excellence in Europe and support the internationalisation of VET providers. Giulia introduced the European platform VET4EU2.EU (www.vet4eu2.eu) that represents teachers, trainers, students and companies involved in VET around Europe. Moving onto the VENHANS project which is a European network and partnerships initiative, the project seeks to provide practical activities and tools aimed at training providers and stakeholders working in the field of VET, and specifically aims to support the development of internationalisation strategies at VET institutions. From the project objectives, action plans have been devised to focus initially on the geographical area of the Western Balkans and on the functional areas of capacity building, promotion and networking. “We have focused a lot on creating events and activities focused on fostering networking of VET providers and stakeholders, always trying to address the topic of excellence”. Echoing the words of Zeynep, Giulia also emphasised the importance of boosting the profile of VET at the European level “so that it is not seen as a second choice but a first choice”. The impact of the VENHANS project is the hub for the VET4EU2 site (Register - HUB VET4EU2), aimed at sharing knowledge and training for the future. As well as the hub, there is an online magazine called The VET Gazette which contains articles, best practice and other information from VET providers around Europe. A real example of international collaboration.
Giulia Meschino, European Vocational Training Association (EVTA)
Project spotlight
The final stages of the meeting saw presentations from two green projects. First, Barbara Archesso, International Project Manager, ENAIP NET, Italy, presented The LIFE FOSTER project which focuses on avoiding waste within the food industry by raising awareness of the problem of food waste and optimal food storage. This is achieved in part by offering education to trainee chefs, kitchen staff and front-of-house restaurant personnel. “The food waste problem is a global and local challenge which needs the adoption of more sustainable practices to prevent and reduce food waste”. “The LIFE FOSTER project wants to contribute to achieving the UN SDG 12 to reduce by 50% the amount of food wastage per capita”. The creation of a model to tackle the food wastage challenge was used to develop fact sheets for training modules for the teachers to deliver the training to the students. For the workplace, the creation of checklists for observable behaviours enabled employers to assess how the students were able to manage a food waste problem when they were in a working environment. This initiative and collaboration between students, VET institutions and industry shows a very joined-up approach to identifying and tackling a real-life environmental challenge.
Barbara Archesso, ENAIP NET, Italy
The second project, The European Platform for Urban Greening was presented by Jan Jeronimus, Project Leader and Progam Manager of Internationalisation at Yuverta, Netherlands. The project www.platformurbangreening.eu which focuses on climate adaptation, bio-diversity and wellbeing “aims to increase the knowledge and skills that are required to address these topics, and to broaden the expertise of professionals in these fields” explained Jan. The international project sees the collaboration of 16 partner organisations from 6 countries and aims to increase urban greening by way of the development of green, living buildings to raise awareness and to support the green transition. Noting that twenty years ago all gardens were flat on the ground, today’s gardeners need to have additional skills, such as climbing skill,s to be able to work on these ‘vertical’ urban gardens and this “shows just one way in which the job is changing”. There are implications also for architects highlighting that “urban greening really needs to be implemented into the very first stages of the planning process”.
Jan Jeronimus, Yuverta, Netherlands
After a very rich meeting, Susanne thanked all participants for their time and acknowledged the extent to which the ENE network was facilitating an incredible number of international partnerships, helping to prepare VET for the twin digital and green transitions.
Watch this space!
The next GRETA thematic sessions in the coming months:
September: Regional Partnerships – skills ecosystems
October: ‘Deep Dive’ into green training programmes
December: School management and green strategy
January: ‘Green Surprise’!
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