<< Background >>Climate change is increasingly perceived as the defining challenge of our time as it endangers life and livelihood on our planet. The project is designed to fit in the current context the Green Deal paved the way to, recognizing the central role of universities for a successful transition to becoming climate neutral by 2050. HEIs’ are asked to be protagonists of transition, but not all of them have the skills to do so, and need to be quickly empowered, as the time to act on the climate crisis is getting shorter. The project aims to contribute to boosting and valorizing the central role of HEIs in tackling the 2030 Agenda, the Green Deal objectives, and overall environmental priorities. That will be done at all levels of the academic community, from students, to teaching staff, and to the organizational, systemic level.At the students’ level, the project intends to respond to the need for awareness on the SDGs and Sustainability, and for skills development. Helping students gain leadership skills in sustainability is necessary to ensure proper youth involvement in the transition, and as a tool to empower their career path and opportunities in the rising green jobs area. At the teaching staff level, BRIGHTS responds to the need for new methodologies to help teachers upskill and reskill their didactic modalities, and to deliver content in new stimulating ways, facing a context where education on sustainability is growing higher, and the contents and research on the matter are rapidly evolving, In this sense, the project aims at responding to the necessity for competences in sustainability, developing green skills-oriented methodologies, to meet the needs of individuals. At a systemic and organizational level, BRIGHTS intends to meet the need highlighted by the Green Deal, to empower Universities in their capacity to address the green transition. On this side, it is fundamental that HEIs do get the support in the establishment of a sustainability centre, working as a catalyst of green opportunities and boosting the institutes’ capacity to be involved in sustainability. Fostering the adoption of sustainability criteria and practices at a systemic, centralized level, via the creation of dedicated offices, with a solid international and collaborative perspective, is pivotal to enabling HEIs in responding to the call for action raised by the Green Deal.<< Objectives >>The project aims to contribute to boosting and valorizing the central role of HEIs in tackling the 2030 Agenda, the Green Deal objectives, and overall environmental priorities.Through educational and training activities, the project intends to boost awareness and engagement at multiple levels: from students’ green skills and orientation to the green jobs’ market to systemic change in the participating organizations at all levels through the development of innovative learning and teaching practices.The project also aims to transversally promote students’ active citizenship (e.g. via youth environmental organizations, peers’ interaction, and share of good practices). A solid part of the training activity foreseen in the project (Sustainability Leadership sessions) is also devoted to the development of social and intercultural competences, critical thinking, promoting dialogue, and virtual exchange among partner HEIs’ students with different backgrounds. The training program will be instrumental in sharing, among young generations, the values the European Union is pursuing in the field of sustainability.<< Implementation >>The project foresees:- Five Transnational Project Meetings, hosted by the five partners, plus virtual meetings taking place every month;- A Learning, training and teaching activity: “International workshop on innovative methodologies for sustainability-related training”, a three-day workshop that will gather students, PhD, and teachers from all the partners with the goal of defining the fundamental basis, criteria, and needs for the most efficient delivery of teaching activities on sustainability. It will be hosted by the University of Pavia- A Learning, training, and teaching activity “Staff week for sustainability officers”, a three-day workshop addressed to the administrative staff of the partner organizations. It will be organized in sessions to tackle various perspectives related to the Sustainability Offices (exchange of good practices, improvement of the performance of the offices, and internationalization strategy) and hosted by the University of Cologne.- Six Multiplier Events for the dissemination of project results, of which three organized by the academic partners that are learning the three PRs (the University of Pavia, University of Cyprus, University of Cologne) and three organized by the non-academic partner garagErasmus, main responsible for the communication and dissemination activities<< Results >>The project aims at reaching three results:1. Realization of MOOCS to train students on the 2030 Agenda, and implementation of Sustainability Leadership sessions. The MOOCS (formal education) and related interactive activities (non-formal education), will enable behavioural changes for individual preferences, consumption habits, and lifestyles, as well as develop sustainability awareness and critical thinking, promoting learners’ leading attitude towards the active engagement in environmental sustainability.2. Development of innovative student-centred methodologies to deliver sustainability-related teachings. On the one hand, it will support teachers to upskill and reskill their teaching modalities and to deliver contents in new stimulating ways. On the other hand, it will support developing green skills-oriented methodologies, to meet the needs of individuals by realizing and testing innovative student-centred replicable practices. 3. Production of a handbook collecting and disseminating good practices related to the setting up of a Sustainability Centre (SC) in HEIs. will empower universities in their capacity to address the green transition by guiding them in setting up and strengthening the Sustainability Centres as catalysts of green opportunities. Fostering the adoption of sustainability criteria and practices at systemic, centralized level, via the creation of dedicated offices, with a solid international and collaborative perspective, is pivotal to enabling HEIs in responding to the call for action raised by the Green Deal.

The general objectives of the project are to strengthen cooperation between the world of education and training and the world of work, to foster quality, innovation and internationalization of partner institutions and to establish transnational cooperation between education providers and regional/local authorities in charge of accreditation of training bodies, development of LLL and recognition of qualifications .In line with the actions put forward in the 2012 Country Specific Recommendations, the project intends to develop methodologies and tools for internationalizing short cycle tertiary qualifications (2 years) and apply the methodology to a pilot SCHE focused on ICT, area where the partner countries present skills shortage and growth potential as well as the need to improve exchange of information between the world of education and the labor market at international level.The project contributes to the strategies of “Europe 2020”, “ET 2020” and the priorities of “Modernising Europe’s Higher Education Systems”, “Opening up Education”.The European Qualification Framework – EQF identifies 8 Levels for the classification of knowledge, competences and skills acquired within formal, informal and non formal educational systems. The EU members were called to take EQF as a reference framework and instrument for understanding qualifications in their national systems. The rapid development of NQFs and their linkage to EQF, is increasingly influencing the writing of curricula and qualification standards, thus signaling that the learn¬ing outcomes approach has been broadly accepted as the basis for European cooperation in the area of education and training, at all levels (ET 2020). “ET 2020”, key instrument to modernise education and training, “Europe 2020”, agreed to stem the worst financial and economic crisis in the EU history, and the 2012 Annual Growth Survey, all stress that education and training systems have to be modernised to reinforce their efficiency and quality and to equip people with the skills and competences they need to succeed on the labor market and call for a particular focus on young people, who are among the groups worst affected by the crisis. The countries where the partners belong are severely affected by the crisis and are registering the highest rate of unemployment of young people thus making the achievement of the objectives agreed at European level very critical. Indeed the governments reduced investment in education and training also at tertiary level, while promoting reforms in line with the directives. In this environment the institutions must exploit all the opportunities offered by European policies to avoid that the reduced financing delays the positive results envisaged by Agenda for Modernising HE, ET 2020 and Europe 2020, with devastating consequences at all levels.The project intends to contribute to 1) Increase Tertiary or equivalent education attainment, 2) Promote Learning mobility.In the partner countries the main gap exists in the scarce connection between VET and HE and in the poor linkage of both with the requirements of the labor market. Thus the provision of international curricula at Level 5 would be the best way to remove the obstacles in connecting the three worlds: universities, VET and labor market, that are often related to the lack of a common language (on knowledge, skills and competences) and of a clear strategy on how to use information on skills supply and needs. The partnership is composed by universities and local decision-making authorities. The universities are very active in the internationalization of curricula and play a key role in the development policies and education reform of their regions/countries but are facing problems due to huge variety of educational offers at VET level that are not clearly inserted in the EQF/NQF and need a proper evaluation. The local authorities which have the task to define and recognize the qualifications developed locally as well as identify the criteria for the recognition of informal and non formal skills and competences, need to start up a clear and fruitful cooperation with the universities and other actors in the education area for the enhancement and warranty of quality and portability of qualifications.The main results of the project are: 1) the development of methodology and tools for the organization of an international degree at Level 5, 2) the experimentation of a pilot SCHE in ICT with the organization of blended mobility, and 3) establishment of clear criteria for the recognition of competences and skills in line with the LO description.Strong emphasis is given to the quality assurance of the curriculum developed through methods and tools for a continuous assessments of learning outputs and activities.