The FEMECO project is a high-performing digital education ecosystem based on Open Education Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices aiming to develop and deliver quality online learning experiences and make them easily and freely accessible to learners across the EU. The specific project objectives were the following: - To develop a unique, state-of-the-art, technology-enhanced online training program on how to make reusable hygiene products & baby diapers - To cultivate green skills and provide social entrepreneurship opportunities and education for women - To raise awareness to the wider public and promote a more sustainable way of lifestyle and consumption behaviour about hygiene products. - To promote high quality, learner-centred adult learning programmes that allows for learner autonomy, flexible and engaging. The project addressed and tackled the damaging consequences that our daily consumption habits have on the environment and offer eco-friendly and sustainable solutions in order to respond the problem.
We applied for this project because we wanted to design and implement an innovative high-performing digital education ecosystem that capitalizes and enhances adult education and higher education resources for delivering quality online learning experiences and make them accessible to learners around the EU. The needs that we addressed through this project were to cultivate green and entrepreneurship skills for women of any age and motivate them to deploy these skills for their small-scale green and social enterprises. The EU ranks sanitary products as the 5th most common single-use waste in its marine environment. In a similar vein, researchers from the University of Manchester (2020) recorded the highest ever accumulation of microplastics discovered on the seafloor (it was found 1.9 mill plastic pieces/square metre). Another need was to tackle the fact was to serve as an example for adult education providers to deliver high-quality training programmes that align people and their needs with the needs of the green economy and labour market. FEMECO aimed to show that this can better be achieved through the pooling of resources and the employment of Open Educational Resources and Pedagogies.