Bergen, 13-17 May 2024
80 enthusiastic colleagues from Green VET schools in 20 European countries gathered in Norway to work with the topic of collaboration and cooperation, under the headline of “Together we go faster and further!” with the main question:
How can we develop our schools, staff, and students through cooperation and collaboration on international, national, and regional levels?
This event was organised by Naturbruksskolenes Forening/EUROPEA Norway. Before the course, all participants were invited to fill in a form where everyone could tell what they really hoped to get out of the course, what they wanted to learn, what they wanted to share and were willing to contribute with during the course. This gave us, as organisers, a really good understanding and a chance to meet the expectations of our guests.
And so, we course focused on the desired issues:
- sharing knowledge, examples and inspiration on how one can develop schools, staff and students through collaboration and cooperation on international, national and regional levels
- understand the opportunities offered by Erasmus+ programs
- sharing ideas for new collaboration
- workshops to develop new international activities for both students and staff, finding partners and developing new projects
- sharing examples and reflect upon why we should, and how we can, cooperate locally and regionally
- learning to know two different VET schools, the nature-based productions of the region and regional educational authorities; and examine how and why they focus on collaboration to achieve their goals
During this short week, we also wanted to share the feeling of Norwegian culture with our guests, some options to see Bergen city and different landscapes outside the city. Go for a walk, talk to each other, listen to traditional music, celebrate our Constitutional Day and enjoy our long, and luckily (this time) sunny days.
Dear EUROPEA colleagues: It was wonderful to have you here! Each one of you did an effort to prove that together we really go both further and faster, and together we succeeded. Besides, we found out that it is much more fun to go together.
Dear Norwegian colleagues: Thank you for all your help and for wonderful hosting!
Please, enjoy the photos from our first day together in Bergen as guests of Vestland County, our second day at Stend Upper Secondary School, and our third day at Austevoll Upper Secondary School – HERE.
Written by Tone Olavsdotter Mosebø, National Coordinator of EUROPEA Norway
Acknowledgements: many thanks to Tone (NO) and EUROPEA-Norway 🙂
Photos: from Tone (NO)
