The first week of November, our Community of Practice for the GreenVET project, consisting of 13 VET schools from Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Slovenia, Latvia, Italy and Egypt, travelled to the city of Espoo in Finland for a three-day workshop full of activities concerning the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Whole Institution Approach (WIA). The main goal of the workshop was for every VET school to establish a realistic action plan which will be aligned to environmental sustainability and the SDGs through the WIA.
The first workshop day started with the warm welcome of the VET school representatives at the Omnia Education Partnerships (OEP) facilities where the training took place. Following, the focus of the entire day’s training was familiarizing all the participants with United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In small groups, the participants were involved in conversations regarding the biggest challenges they face in their own educational institutions as regards the application of the Goals. Finally, they thoroughly explored the interconnection between the most important Goals for them with vocational education.
The second day, the agenda began with inspiring speeches by OEP representatives who informed us about the wealth of sustainable practices that have been applied to their school for years and after this, we took a tour around the facilities so that we could get firsthand experience of how everything they talked about is indeed applied. Later, our partners from Germany took turn in explaining to all the teams the values and importance of the Whole Institution Approach (WIA), which is what will be used by the VET schools in order to realize the plans they have committed to.
The beginning of the last day of our educational workshop had us sharing our feelings towards the previous days’ procedures and in continuation, focusing now on each VET school’s action plan. Advised by the GreenVET project team members, the participants created their own plan which will be followed by their VET school so that it becomes more environmentally sustainable. Lastly, before we say our goodbyes, we raised a glass to the new relationships and the paths that were formed for further collaborations and mutual assistance in the field of environmental sustainability within vocational education.
Those three days can be considered as a highly important step towards achieving the goals that GreenVET has set as well as for the future of the VET schools themselves since they received a plethora of information which is to help them rearrange their functions and their teachings according to what the new sustainability rules command. Furthermore, their students will pass on the knowledge they got from their school to their future workplaces, and just like that, they will become worthy continuators of a project which, even from its inception, its goal was a better and greener future for all.
We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to IEK DELTA 360 and IEK SBIE for their participation in GreenVET, as well as to our participants from these schools: Chrysa Karlou, Fiorenza Vardopoulou, Irini Demetriou and Dionysis Georgantopoulos for their enthusiasm and their particularly active presence at the educational activities of the project.
More training is yet to come. Stay tuned.
