Boosting Circular Economy Expertise through Learning Communities

ongoing

The BECOME (Boosting Circular Economy Expertise through Learning Communities) project has the objective of fostering the green skills of future experts in the circular economy. To address this need for a transition towards a circular economy (CE), we need to reinforce the cooperation between education (i.e., HEI and VET) and labour market actors to educate current and future professionals able to develop viable solutions for the circular economy and its respective business models. This will be achieved through building strong circular economy learning communities or “Circular Hubs” in which experts engage in training activities, share state-of-the-art knowledge and best practices to boost the essential aim of educating future experts in this domain. BECOME combines the expertise of two VETs, four HEIs, and four labour market actors from four European countries, namely Finland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Slovenia. The consortium pursues the following activities: (1) Analysis of Regional CE Ecosystems and Learning Communities, (2) Development of CE Learning Building Blocks, (3) Fostering CE Skills for Professionals, (4) Creation and Exploitation of Learning Communities on Circular Economy in Europe, (5) Piloting, Monitoring and Evaluation of CE Learning Outcomes. Among the results are a gap analysis report on CE content and skills in existing ecosystems, training the trainer/educator formats based on the developed CE Learning Building Blocks, CE skills training for practitioners/professionals, and four CE Learning Communities in the four EU member countries involved. The effectiveness of the developed teaching and learning content and infrastructure will be piloted, tested, and evaluated to foster improvement and suitable learning outcomes.