Because of the challenges brought out by various international official documents, the operators in the field of environmental education for a sustainable development (EESD) face an increasingly keen social request. It has also emerged clearly that EESD jobs are not properly defined and suffer from a lack of organisation at the European level, let alone the gap is widening regarding the operators' training between countries. In addition, a good amount of operators provide education to environmental issues and sustainable development even though it is not their core activities - especially teachers, trainers, network officers, technical officers from natural parks, advisors and local development coordinators. Nowadays the actors' activities turn to tackle significant issues such as : how to accompany the ecological transition on territories through a citizens' movement for change? Today such a new aspect of the job means a new stance to adopt for those concerned. The activities in keeping with the issues are focussed on activities through a participative and a collaborative approach let alone taking into account the actors of the territory in order to reach active citizenship. Through projects leading and approaches of “territorial appropriation”, the local actors will have to coordinate and mobilize people of all ages – especially the young ones - to initiate real collective approaches of “active and responsible citizenship”. The main target being a successful living together through the respect of each ndividual and environmental friendliness.Dealing with new challenges many professionals express their requirements both in teaching resources and exchanging professional practices.For a few months ETRES project (European Educational & Training Resources for Environment & Sustainability) has been part and parcel of a plan initiated by a group of EESD operators from several European countries. The plan started during the European EESD days in Lyon last March 2013 followed by two seminars : one in Bergamo last autumn 2014 and the other one in Barcelona in 2015. In such a context of networking the EESD operators at the European level, ETRES aims at strenghtening and professionalizing those involved in environmental education issues. The project managed to gather different partners engaged in lifelong training as well as operators involved in EESD issues - like IFREE and Montpellier SupAgro - local and national groups of operators like Languedoc-Roussillon GRAINE, an international network from Greece called POLIS, let alone Alchimia which is an Italian lead social cooperative gathering environmentally-committed social workers and a regional wildlife park called Parco Nord Milano and last but not least a Spanish company called Tekieroverde specialized in environmental communication.The target audiences to be reached are not only environmental awareness teachers, officers or trainers but anyone promoting in their own activities environmental stakes and sustainable development issues like rural advisors, teachers in general, local network officers, business project managers, guides of natural parks, volunteers in friendly-environmental NGOs…The work approach will be led with and for the EESD professionals with the goal of setting up a training programme to improve the professional skills of the EESD operators. First of all a training expertise will be carried out to collect data in order to analyze the professionals' work environment like their issues or needs. In the light of their needs, skills and the different standard situations identified in various European work environments, two or three topics will be picked out to build solid training courses. The main target is to create a follow-up and support programme through training courses for the mentioned operators. The conditions for implementation remain to be determined either through face-to-face training sessions and/or distance and/or through MOOC sessions.To capitalize and disseminate the results showing the European development process in the field of EESD, an Internet social platform will be created to gather the project's data and outputs in various languages. The whole training programme will be collectively set up by all partners who commit to sharing and creating educational tools and resources. Each partner country will then fit the training programme, the created tools and resources to their professional situations and contexts. Not only does the training programme contribute to foster and frame the professional skills of the different operators, especially among the partner countries, but also to extend its scope to other European countries afterwards. They will thus be in keeping with a dynamic and enduring approach to ensure the development of their professional networks.ETRES will definitely help to define a core skills framework for the EESD careers. The project will also provide online courses, set up a network
Since 1972, environmental education and sustainable development (ESDD) has been recognized as a powerful lever for changing attitudes and behaviour and enabling societies to make an ecological and inclusive transition (objectives 4 and 4.7 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for Agenda 2030, UN). At the time of the UN World Climate Summit in September 2019, we are in urgent need of action. The world of ESD education is very diverse in Europe, supported by several types of institutions and structures with actors with very different professions, functions and status, ranging from voluntary action to higher education. They work in the field with a variety of audiences. The professional sector of EESD is still young, self-organized, with a training offer that is being structured. Our ETRES European Educational & Training Resources for Environment & Sustainability project brings together partners involved in EESD training: an association combining EESD research and training (IFREE and Montpellier SupAgro), a regional network of professional EESD actors (GRAINE Occitanie association), an international network of EESD actors based in Greece (Polis NGO), a social cooperative bringing together social workers committed to sustainable development: Social cooperative Alchimia in Italy, a training centre ed EEDD located in a regional natural park (Area Parchi Lombardia - Parco Nord Milano Italy), and a Spanish company specializing in communication on the environment (Tekieroverde). Our main objective is to contribute to the professionalization of ESD actors in Europe and in our respective countries. More specifically, we have worked to highlight an emerging function for these actors and in our territories: the support of the ecological transition through citizen dynamics. With regard to this new function, our objective was to set up an online training platform and integrated training systems in the networks of EESD actors in our different territories. In our four countries, we have highlighted the outlines of this new support function. We have drawn up a reference framework of key activities with the actors in the field. We have developed educational resources in the form of fact sheets and videos to illustrate key situations and activities and provide theoretical, methodological and practical elements for the training and self-training of EESD practitioners in line with the skills needed in the field. ETRES is currently an online training platform (https://etreserasmus.eu/), free of rights, translated into four languages, structured in the form of five modules containing about sixty downloadable educational resources formatted and presented in a pedagogical booklet facilitating their use for training structures and actors in self-training. ETRES is now integrated into about ten training systems in the four countries of the partnership, under various modalities: within professional continuing training, initial training formally validating the acquired skills (certificate, ECTS, digital badges). Two digital badges highlight the skills of accompanying practitioners and trainers who are familiar with ETRES tools. ETRES is a territorial and European dynamic bringing together actors committed to supporting the ecological transition through citizen dynamics: the main ESD networks of the four countries are mobilized and about twenty referents and relays are identified on the ETRES website. The animation of an ETRES dynamic is planned until 2021. The organizations participating in the project have all developed expertise on the issue of supporting the ecological transition through citizen dynamics and on pedagogical engineering in a European context. We have created training and reflection processes within our countries and we have been able to reactivate a network of exchanges and mutualisation on these issues at European level. We have already trained about a hundred EESD actors whose acquired skills are valued in the form of certificates, ECTS credits or digital badges. We have carried out about ten participatory events and many meetings in order to disseminate ETRES in our territories. The scheme, which gradually involves new participants, will be presented in Bangkok at the World Environmental Education Network (WEEC) Summit from 3 to 7 November 2019.