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Green Village project:
The
"Green Village" project brings together 9 European states, who share
common problems in their local rural areas, such as outward migration of young
people, aging populations, abandonment of land, loss of traditional skills and
income strands, disintegration of cultural landscape. The partners also
recognise and share a number of opportunities for sustainable development on a
village scale, through contemporisation of traditional skills, rural energy
supply, empowerment of communities and development of new markets for natural,
local and sustainable products, including rural food and wood but also
culture and nature, through the
development of touristic offerings. These opportunities need to be brought into
VET through a collection of study modules for delivery on a village scale to
local people, practitioners & visiting students, in order to kick start
rural regeneration. Through a series of
Work Packages the project develops 6 modules, on Sustainable building, Rural
energy, Empowering communities, Rural food, Sustainable ancestors and Wood
products. Further WP's are on Access to Rural Research - ensuring that science
supports the modules, i.e., in terms of carbon emissions; Dissemination - to be
sure that project results are widely read and multiplied; Learning by Doing -
testing models and ideas through a series of practical training actions
delivered by local and international experts to local people in each rural area
and visitors from twinned partner regions. The modules will seek to transfer
appropriate technologies between regions and people and will be transferable to
all rural areas in Europe. Each of the 9 partners have links to training
institutions within further and higher education and these will be used in the
process of curriculum design and development. The legacy of Green Village will
be visible benefit in selected villages and curriculum delivered into the
future by a network of VET institutions and organisations undertaking mobility.
We aim to involve villagers in VET,
rooted in real life. We’ll adopt the participative approach developed through
LEADER to develop local people as demonstrators & trainers linking to local
vocational schools. We will run actions to capture valuable and sustainable
skills & encapsulate them in 6 modules, delivered to (& sometimes by)
the villagers themselves, local students plus those visiting through mobility
& rural practitioners. The village hall, the fields & the forests will
be typical training venues. The modules, 'Rural food', 'Rural energy', 'Wood
products', 'Sustainable building', 'Sustainable ancestors' 'Empowering
communities', will gather examples of success concerning skills & processes
that have gained contemporary relevance for the 21st century village. Through
the WP 'Access to Research', we will show the tangible link between research
& it's application on the ground. We will involve all villagers,
encouraging the excluded to take part in training, offer up their skills and
undertake mobility. We will secure a legacy through linking to ongoing mobility
through LdV & GRUNDTVIG & establishing at network of vocational schools
in each partner region - who will join each of the 23 local training &
rural development actions, spread across 9 countries that span the breadth of
Europe from Iceland to Cyprus. The modules bring together the best rural
practice of the east & the west, linked to contemporary; they seize an
opportunity to address the identified needs & raise incomes, thus improving
the quality of life in Europe's villages. We will open a ‘Window onto the
World’ through a WP which adopts modern, youth-orientated communication
(facebook, yahoo mess’, Skype) and undertake dissemination to all stakeholders
through a carefully developed plan. The ‘Empowering Communities’ module will
link into less formal education through GRUNDTVIG & ‘Youth-in-Action’ &
we would look to promote and enhance it into the future through the ‘European
Social Fund'.
The
sectors represented by the consortium and involved in 'Green Village' include
'Forestry', 'Cultural heritage' and 'Rural development' - through local
networks, 'Agriculture' also features strongly. Each partner links to an
educational institution thus bringing 'Education' into the project.
Additionally there are two research organisations, NAVE in Iceland are
concerned with cultural/social/historical research and IVALSA from Italy in
wood/forest research. Both are 'Applied research', this is also sectorial - and
it could be termed 'vocational research' because the lead-in to practical application
is short and suited to businesses. The partners and sectors are carefully
selected to cover the 'Green Village' theme. We aim to reach deeply into the
sectors through the strengths of our local networks which span the sector and
link rural sectors together (culture / nature / environment / social + Forestry
& Agriculture). All partners have 'Equal Opportunity' policies and P1, P2,
P4, P8 & P9 are active social partners, working with excluded and
disadvantaged groups (sometimes disabled), including ethnic minorities, older
residents, women returning to work/education, long term unemployed,
geographically disadvantaged. Green Village is designed to accommodate and
include all parts of each targeted community. The project is SME-led, the consortium includes 3 SME's, 3 NGO's, 1
Public body, 2 research organisations. The SME's & the NGO's all are linked
into the economic aspects of rural development and recognise that VET must
result in jobs, product development, enhanced markets and increased rural income.
To this end, the target groups for the curriculum developed include
practitioners and businesses as well as villagers, who include farmers and
forest owners/ foresters; the vast majority of this target group are SME's. VET
trainees are also targeted; they are from local, rurally based schools who have
strong industry linkages and develop trainees for local jobs.
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