Our SEED project aims to raise the level of professionalism in road freight transport for both instructors and drivers through a cross-national, cross-sectoral and multilingual partnership (9 partners in 7 countries: France, Belgium, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo). SEED is aimed primarily at increasing the level of training and technical skills for instructors who provide initial and periodic training (CPC Driver) to truck drivers in the South Eastern region of Europe. By making the best use of their "differences," resources, skills, knowledege and expertise of the field, partners will produce a package of training resources including a core programmme enriched with partners' national needs and labour market requirements, ICT-based case studies, driver's and instructor's guides, examination forms and evaluation methods. SEED training programme will also promote innovative and interactive pedagogical approaches whilst exploring new training and learning strategies in the field of road transport. All 9 partners will be strongly committed in designing, implementing, monitoring, rating and disseminating project results for a successful partnership. Pilot training sessions will be organised in each participating South East Europe country halfway through the project lifetime in order to evaluate the relevance and quality of the SEED programme nationwide prior to its further dissemination in the EU and beyond. National workshops for awareness-building in each SEE participating country, European meetings and conferences will be set up to showcase the SEED project outcomes to the wider community of private and public stakeholders of the road freight transport industry. The final objective of SEED is to lead to harmonisation of CPC Driver training and mutual recognition of driver qualification in full conformity with the objectives of EU ET 2020 and EU transport legislation In a nutshell our project will result in: * Higher level of professionalism in road transport delivery * Motivated workforce, committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organisations * Better trained and better qualified instructors and professional drivers * New learning experiences across cultural borders (between Western and South East Europe/SEE) * Extended network of relationship between different countries * Increased capacity building and potential for innovation and change in a rapidly-evolving sector * increased labour mobility
SEED project has gathered 9 partners in 7 European countries: Promotrans (France), IRU Projects (Belgium), POU, EKOmobilis, Oryx (Croatia), COB (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, AMERIT (FYR of Macedonia), TEMPULLI (Kosovo). All 9 partners specialize in road freight transport training. The European directive 2003/59/EC regulates common basic and continuous training - 35 hours every 5 years - for professional drivers to make sure their skills are keeping up with a rapidly-evolving transport environment. The directive has been extended to EU candidate countries. The preparation phase has shed some light on SEED partner countries of South East Europe (SEE): they are at different stages of the implementation of EU directive. Furthermore, shared training and professional practices are lacking in the SEE region. SEED aims to raise the level of professionalism in road transport for both instructors and drivers (the 2 targets of the project) by increasing the level of training and technical skills for these actors operating in a key sector for the European economy. By making the best use of their "differences," skills, knowledge and expertise of the field, the SEED partners have produced a thorough multilingual training program in conformity with the European regulations and adapted to their own transport environment. It contains a core program enriched with partners' own training provisions, videos, driver's and instructor's guidebooks, as well as evaluation tools. These training resources have been tested during the SEED training activities targeted to instructors, then to drivers. These activities have also been the opportunity to promote innovative and interactive pedagogical methods whilst exploring new training and learning strategies in the field of road transport. A National workshop for awareness-building, a EU conference as well as an ATI Regional meeting have been set up in order to showcase the SEED project outcomes, their quality and relevance to the wider community of private and public stakeholders of the road freight transport industry in South East Europe. The positive feedback received from the project partners', instructors', drivers' satisfaction surveys as well as people participating in the dissemination activities augurs well for the project in term of sustainability. By raising the number of qualified CPC Driver instructors and well-trained professional drivers concerned with eco-driving and road safety, SEED has a real added-value for South East Europe, thus contributing to the further opening of the European road haulage market.