Our project aimed to foster green skills and competences related to the Circular Economy and sustainability in the W&F sector, addressing labor market needs, enhancing learning and transnational mobility, giving young Europeans firsthand experience with the sector’s innovative green transition. Achieved objectives: Enhanced green skills of woodworkers, making them resilient to sector changes and leading the circular transition. Improved VET training offers and innovation, supporting the school-to-work transition. Strengthened the dual-learning system practice. Boosted cooperation and dialogue between sectoral stakeholders. Increased awareness of EU citizenship among young students and workers. We delivered: A joint curriculum for the “Circular and Sustainable Woodworker” profile, including a comprehensive job description, key competences, and learning outcomes. A digital platform/virtual community for e-learning, featuring multilingual content and various multimedia resources. A training package covering eco-design, circular economy technologies, sustainable materials, and legislative instruments. Blended trainingevents for VET trainers and physical mobility for students and young workers, providing hands-on experience in Hungary.
We applied for this project to tackle key challenges in the EU furniture sector, which includes ~120,000 companies and over 1 million workers, mainly SMEs and micro firms. The sector faces threats like competition from low-cost countries, an ageing workforce, poor attraction of young talent, protectionist measures, high innovation costs, and weak IPR protection. Despite over 2 million vacancies in Europe, youth unemployment is high at 17.5%. The sector is undergoing a Twin Transition: Green and Digital, requiring new skills, especially for roles like cabinet makers and furniture assemblers. Our project, WOODCircle, complemented WOODigital by focusing on the green transition. In 4 learning units it covered Circular economy, Circular design, Sustainable materials, and Resources, manufacturing, and waste. The course was piloted through virtual/blended and physical mobility, enhancing European citizenship awareness among young students and workers. This hands-on experience in Hungary validated the training and promoted dual system VET from a transnational perspective.