Organic seed portfolio in climate change project is created by institutions from, France, Italy, Estonia, Portugal and Polonia Coordinator of the project is EUROPEA. Slovakia, partners' organizations belong to different economic sectors and have different backgrounds, that give synergy for this project in order to promote the autochthonous seeds recovering and saving practices on local, national and European levels. Our project is addressed to VET provider, trainers and students to upgrade their skills and competencies agricultural biodiversity approach and management answering to new challenges in climate changes in Europe. Staring from sharing of good practices in local agriculture knowledge we decided to develop as Intellectual Outputs a new training curriculum and training materials to improve skills and competencies about autochthonous seeds safeguard and cultivation inside a sustainable developing economy, educating to biodiversity safeguard and management creating too interest of different stakeholders. The training material developed according to work based on learning methodology will be useful for the self-training approach. We aim also to create local micro-networks with our associated partners involved in all project development stages. The specific objectives of this project are: •To identify the special training needs for VET educators and professionals involved in agri-business biodiversity safeguard •To develop a joint curriculum for seeds savers profile design identifying the criteria and procedures to reach the qualifications needed and to be acquired •to improve and explore different forms of testing and evaluation competencies for VET educators •To disseminate and exploit the results of the project, in order to develop a link between the partnership and key stakeholders or beneficiaries in the seed custody system. To reach the aims of our partnership is to produce the following Tangible results: 1)The creation of the Seeds Portfolio Survival Kit for VET trainers containing common guidelines. The survival kit will be published in the online version in the form of open training material including a general lesson plan, a select collection of old local varieties to save in each country, training materials contents elaborated as samples to train about biodiversity, biodiversity hand glossary and methodological training approach suggestions. Seed Portfolio Survival kit will be made available as Open Educational Resources (OER) IO2 2)The design of the Seeds saver in agriculture training’s curriculum: a comprehensive and innovative curriculum enriched by good practices developed during local and transnational activities, designed according to the needs and features of the VET agricultural sector including practical advises work-oriented education and other additions that will be implemented during the development of this output.IO1 As intangible results in form of learning outcomes we expect that knowledge and experience will be gained by the direct participants: ) VET staff and trainers/facilitators/educators will be active participants of the project since the very beginning. They will work together to prepare the Intellectual Outputs and learning outcomes they carried out after the pilot training sessions in their institutions. Trainees and students will be part of pilot training sessions and will share their feedback on the new training material developed by the project. 2) Greater cultural awareness - first of all the training sessions will be focused on cultural differences in the agricultural approach techniques of each country. Secondly, partners will have the chance to visit partners’ countries and institutions, to learn about local specific contexts, cultures, and traditions taking part in European identity building. We expect a wide impact on VET community, relevant stakeholders and local policymaker in the use of our produced outputs to realize a biodiversity approach in local agriculture management for the future. This project and its outcomes are sustainable because this is part of our daily life and the work we are committed to, will continue further beyond the date end of this project. As the project topic matches the Europe Agenda 2030 new growth strategy that aims to transform, protect, conserve and enhance the EU's natural capital, and protect the health and well-being of citizens from environment-related risks and impact we expect that our project it will attract more effort from regional and national authorities, which will contribute to the sustainability of the project.
Seed Portfolio is a project which was created to conserve and protect endemic seeds and to let the world of VET to know about the value of endemic production. Our aim was also to spread knowledge combining different European agricultural traditions in our internal network consisting of partner countries. Objective of this Project was to advertise and share original practice of seed protection on local, national and European level. Partnership consisted of organisations from different sectors (educational, research, public non profit making organization and others). Project team took over tasks in effort to maintain biodiversity by building up local seed protection networks. As the outputs combine various unique local traditions It may become a common treasury of knowledge. A Training of VET was held to ensure acquisition of specific competencies about ancient seeds safeguard and custody process, including acquisition of skills based on various existing practices in collaborating countries. These aims were relevant to Erasmus+ horizontal priority to support educators and learners in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competencies.
The SeedPortfolio was developed as a response to the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The Strategy aimed to stop the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem in EU and help to stop global biodiversity loss by 2020. It reflects the commitments taken by the EU in 2010, within the international Convention on Biological Diversity. Strategy identified 5 actions to ensure that agriculture and forestry help maintain biodiversity. In particular partners of this project paid attention on aims of the act. 9 and 10:Better target Rural Development to biodiversity needs and develop tools to help farmers and foresters work together towards biodiversity; Conserve and support genetic diversity in Europe's agriculture. About 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost worldwide since industrialisation. In response to this decline, the sustainable use and enhancement of plant genetic resources and agricult. genetic diversity form an important part of the EU biodiversity strategy. Farmers have contributed substantially to the evolution of genetic diversity in agricult. and they play a key role in the dynamic conservation and continuous improvement of these strategic resources. The project supports an idea of returning back to use and protection of autochthonous species within ecosystem.