CHOICE and Circular Bricks are now sister projects, working in synergy to support each other in providing the necessary tools to teachers and educators to be able to teach their students key concepts of sustainability.
In order to broaden the spectrum of the project activities, the CHOICE team entered into cooperation with Circular Bricks project, an Erasmus+ initiative focusing on training and educating the new generation of VET (Vocational Education and Training) Bioeconomy professionals with the necessary hard and soft skills. Specifically, Circular Bricks trains VET teachers from the agri-food sector to enable them to educate their students (i.e. the future generation of circular bioeconomy professionals), with the necessary green skills required by the current and future industries operating in the European circular bioeconomy. The cooperation between the two projects has been officially confirmed in late September.
Since the two projects work on complementary topics, a synergetic collaboration between CHOICE and Circular Bricks will be very fruitful and foster an exchange of ideas, concepts and methodologies beneficial for both of the Erasmus+ initiatives, besides supporting each other in future activities and events. In fact, the two projects started discussing how they can contribute to each other’s work: as Circular Bricks is training agri-food VET educators on how to best develop the necessary green skills in future circular bioeconomy specialists, CHOICE will work together with the project to organise training sessions for CHOICE’s teachers on circular bioeconomy and its importance for sustainability, thus providing teachers and educators with the appropriate methodological tools for teaching these key concepts to their students.
The Circular Bricks Consortium, coordinated by Unitelma Sapienza, is composed of 7 partners: 3 technical partners from Italy and Spain, bringing an in-depth knowledge on circular bioeconomy related topics; and 4 VET institutes (from Italy, Spain, Greece and Romania) operating in the agri-food sector.
During the course of the project, Circular Bricks will develop innovative pedagogical material on circular bioeconomy-related topics for VET teachers, keeping a Train-the-Trainer approach. Specifically, involved teachers will be provided with a thorough and practical approach to circular bioeconomy principles and their implementation in the agri-food sector, as well as with efficient tools for holding effective and engaging design thinking sessions and preparing learners to become true agents of change. At the end of the project, both teachers and students will have acquired new green skills and competencies, thus adding “circular bricks” to their know-how. From CHOICE’s side, the project will provide its teachers and educators to participate in the Circular Bricks trainings and activities, as one of their objective is to reach as many people possible to engage in their circular bioeconomy training sessions.
Indeed, CHOICE and Circular Bricks have several conjunction points, in which both the projects can effectively support the other in achieving their goals of upskilling teachers and educators on sustainability, so that they may educate the current EU youth and future citizens to lead greener and more sustainable attitudes and lifestyles.
