The University of Alicante (UA) is hosting the steering committee meeting of the European project TEAM#UP, an Erasmus+ initiative aiming to provide practical knowledge on ecological restoration to vocational training (FP) schools across Europe. The consortium, comprising 15 partners from five countries (Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany, Norway, and Spain) and nearly 70 experts, seeks to empower the next generation of environmental managers, including farmers, landscapers, foresters, and gardeners, through the creation and dissemination of immersive educational resources.
Over two days, October 15th and 16th, more than twenty representatives from organizations committed to conservation and environmental education are meeting in Alicante to exchange experiences and define the project's next milestones. New strategies will be discussed to bring ecological restoration resources closer to FP centers in the Comunitat Valenciana and Europe. These resources include four MOOCs (massive open online courses) on restoring arid zones, urban environments, agricultural landscapes, and peatlands, along with a session on the educational use of virtual field trips.
The meeting will conclude tomorrow with visits to the Mar Menor restoration project in Murcia, in collaboration with the Technical Office of the Ministry for Ecological Transition, and to CIPFP El Palmeral in Orihuela. These visits will offer insights into relevant experiences for applying ecological restoration in the training of future professionals.
The University of Alicante, as the project coordinator in Spain, contributes its expertise in developing study plans and educational resources on arid zone restoration in English, Spanish, and Valencian. The research group Management and Restoration of Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems at the UA has a long-standing track record in R&D projects focused on restoration ecology and arid land ecology for the past 30 years.
The main objective of TEAM#UP is to mobilize knowledge and skills in ecological restoration to address existing gaps in vocational environmental training. To this end, four Centers of Professional Excellence (CoVE) have been established in Germany (multifunctional and sustainable land use in agricultural systems), Norway (restoration of old infrastructure, ecological compensation, and landscaping), the Czech Republic (restoration in urban and rural landscapes), and Spain (forest restoration and disaster risk management). The resources will be available on a free-access multilingual platform.
