"""Like all major transitions in human history, the shift from a linear to a circular economy will be a tumultuous one. It will feature heroes and pioneers, naysayers and obstacles, and moments of victory and doubt. If we persevere, however, we will put our economy back on a path of growth and sustainability. "" Frans van HoutenThe European Commission adopted an ambitious Circular Economy Package, that will help stimulate Europe's transition towards a circular economy, foster sustainable economic growth and generate new jobs.The Package consists of an EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy that establishes a programme of action, aimed to ""closing the loop"" of products through recycling and re-use.CIRCULAR SKILLS understands, that this is a multi-faces challenge. For the economy to become truly circular, all stakeholders need to get involved: public authorities, businesses, trade unions, civil society and especially educators and trainer.We want future educators to be able to combine circular economy expertise with their own competence. We believe that when today’s learners are ready to enter employment, the circular economy will be the only way of operating.CIRCULAR SKILLS will be combined out of three phases and will produce three products (intellectual outputs).The first phase will be a desktop-research on identifying smart practices in teaching and applying circular economy principles. Parallel a need assessment will be launched to understand the demands of the education provider and the learners in the partnership countries. The results will be presented at Transnational Meetings and will result in an assessment system for smart practices, suited for the self-assessment of educators.The collected practices are reviewed and used to co-design three training modules:1. helping SMEs to adapt to the main aspects of the circular economy,2. focused on learners, providing them with the skills to apply circular economy principles in their work life,3. helping socio-economic disadvantaged learners to gain the skills to start their own businesses.The training modules will be tested in co-creation labs and will be presented to the wider public in multiplier events.Further results will be:1. A Smart Practice Report published as an ebook2. A self-assessment questionnaire3. A methodology to implement and run co-creation labs in vocational training4. A trans-European network of experts on the circular economy5. An Interactive, open database on circular skills. The project is targeted on trainer, teacher and learner in VET.The smart practice assessment is based on the ‘Eightfold Path analysis’ developed by Bardach:1. the partnership develops a realistic expectation by getting to know the field.2. We analyze practices and compare them with a criteria Catalogue.3. We test the practice.4. We create a SWOT analysis and reflect on the transferability.5. We document and review the practices with recommendations on where and how to use them.Methodology of the Training ActivitiesThe design of the co-creation labs will be based on Kolb's experiential learning theory, represented by a four-stage cycle:- Concrete Experience -a new experience of the situation is encountered- Reflective Observation of the new experience- Abstract Reflection gives rise to a new idea or a modification of an existing concept- Active Experimentation, applying the reflections to the world around them to see what resultsThe sustainable use of the results is crucial for CIRCULAR SKILLS. Collecting and documenting the methodology in training modules is considered by the partnership as a first step. The methods will be the source of the curriculum. Since the results are relevant for all education sectors and provide Pathways for the recognition of the importance of circular life skills will be explored for access programmes. The project will have established links with researchers and innovative thinkers in Universities within and beyond the EU.The continuing development of a European network of circular co-creation hubs will enable a wide sharing of the training modules and will enable users’ skills which will ensure that this circular economy continues to go forward with strength, recognition and provide a pathway to further education, mobilisation and greater social innovation."

Circle VET ProjectCircular Economy – we all care about it, collectively and individually, but somehow, we have so far remained apart. This is one of the main lessons we have learned during the CircleVET project. While countries like Finland are ahead in integrating circular economy in their vocational education (VET), others, like Germany, are catching up and still others, such as Turkey, seem to be lagging behind. However, all over Europe, new ideas are emerging on how to integrate the circular economy into vocational education. Their practical implementation is a European topic, and this is precisely what CircleVET has focused on.All participants of the project have become more aware of the need to use circular economy skills in their work. They are ready to share their newly gained knowledge, to teach and encourage others to understand the ongoing transition towards circular economy and its potential. The trained facilitators have acquired new tools for training and teaching circular economy in VET. The partners went through different processes, learnt a lot from each other and improved the knowledge and skills of their staff.E-bookThe compendium was produced as a result of the Circle VET project. It is a comprehensive compendium of hands-on methods used across Europe. This manual provides easy-to-apply innovative tools and methods designed to motivate learners to stay involved and update their skills for the ongoing transition from a linear to a circular economy.Evaluation of good practisesCircleVET has developed an assessment grid for practices based on the following four principles:• interdisciplinary approaches;• real-life relevance and applicability;• critical Thinking (rethinking) of the current status;• flexibility and versatility.After identifying and evaluating smart practices in teaching and applying circular economy principles, we came to the conclusion that our foremost task should be to focus on determining methods that provide an introduction into and a general overview of the possibilities to teach the basics of circular economy.At the same time, our visits to various organisations and businesses have demonstrated that good practices exist in all partner countries, even though they are often not yet being identified and labelled as “circular”. During several transnational meetings, we have presented more than 70 smart practices, not only from Finland, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey but also from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.During the second meeting in Madrid, we established an assessment grid – a tool which was very helpful for selecting practices that are among the smartest. Those presented in this e-book are in our opinion the most interesting, representative, useful and transferable ones.3 online labsAll practices, methods and experiences collected were tested and reviewed in three thematic training labs:Testing circular methods for co-working and innovation hubs: general and business oriented methodsTesting circular methods in FashionTesting circular methods in RecyclingThe design of the training labs was based on David Kolb’s experiential learning theory, represented by a four-stage cycle: concrete experience, reflective observation of the new experience, abstract reflection, and active experimentation.The three labs consisted of practical activities during which a diverse group of peers shared their experience and explored potential solutions with the aim of co-discovery, that is exploration in a collaborative setting.Not offline but online...Initially, we had planned to meet physically for these labs, but the onset of the Covid19 pandemic and the restrictions on travelling and meeting during the last part of the project made this impossible. Thanks to the German National Agency we were able to move the labs online.Policy recommendationThe detailed discussion of the selected practices has allowed us to work out recommendations on where and how to use them. Based on the lessons learned while testing these methods in our labs, we have decided to target the recommendations at practitioners and decision-makers.On the local level, our project has resulted in an increasing awareness of the importance of the circular economy and of the potential of using local dissemination circuits, especially in the fashion and recycling sectors.We wanted to contribute to European discourses on teaching and learning skills required for a future circular economy. All project results are intended to help designing curricula for schools and providers of adult, youth and vocational education providers by offering ways to promote further education, mobilisation, and greater social innovation in this field.Our ultimate goal is to contribute to finding new, innovative means that allow us to move away from a culture of “produce to discard”, as outlined by the European Commission, and work toward the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan.

The tExtended project will achieve its overall objective of reduction of textile waste by 80% by within industrial-urbal symbiosis developing and demonstrating effective textile recovery, waste valorisation and recycling processes combined with digital tools, sensing systems and data-driven solutions to support sustainable circularity of textiles. We will develop a knowledge-based Blueprint, i.e. a master plan for a sustainable textile ecosystem. The basis of the Blueprint is a Conceptual Framework which determines the optimized utilization of textile flows, aiming for retention of value of materials in a safe and sustainable way. Based on the Blueprint, we will implement a real scale demonstrator, verifying its replicability and potential to reduce textile waste. tExtended brings together a multidisciplinary group of experts with complementary skills needed for twin transition in sustainable textile sector. Different types of organizations, research, industry, and non-profit organizations such as NGOs and municipal waste management are included. The consortium consists of actors with different roles in the textile recycling ecosystem: waste management, recycling, textile materials and textile products manufacturing. Participation of forerunner companies and actors involved in textile recycling enables us also to spread best practises for textile recovery and recycling around Europe and across the sector.

<< Objectives >>Our main objective is to improve the methodology and tools for teaching cyber security to the target group of people, which is young adults 16-35.We chose the target group for two reasons: 1) the young group is statistically less responsible in terms of online safety 2) the amount of time young people spend online and the associated high number of online accounts and exposure to the online environment is enormous, and so for them, ignorance of cybersecurity poses a huge risk.<< Implementation >>Administrative and support activities: management, exploitation of results and sustainability, Translation into English and Slovak, Internal quality assurance of outputs, travel arrangements and networking activities, Implementation of activities for the development of the gamified educational module CyberBox: Development of the game logic of the educational module, Creation of the content of the educational module, Software development of the game educational module, SW Testing.<< Results >>The project will create a gamified CyberBox educational module where players will experience how to defend themselves against the most common threats such as: social hacking and social engineering, phishing, various types of malware (spyware, adware, ransomeware, etc.)The player will interact with the game, choosing strategies to behave in the online world. He will deal with questions of how to protect his devices, his online accounts, etc. Methodology for trainers and mentors.