The six SME Green Skills Hub partners from five European countries meet online for the launch of the project. This first consortium meeting was scheduled to take place in Spain, hosted by the project coordinator INFODEF, but was finally held online due to mobility restrictions resulting from COVID19.

This first meeting was aimed to establish milestones, share the division of responsibilities and the activities to be carried out during the next three years in order to achieve the project’s objectives and results as well as to introduce each of the consortium partners: the Institute for the Promotion of Development and the Training and Innovative Business Cluster for Efficient Construction from Spain, Mindshift Talent Advisory from Portugal, Foundation for Research and Innovation from Italy, Governorship of Istanbul from Turkey and Innoquality Systems from Ireland.

During this first session, which took place on 16 December 2020, the SME Green Skills Hub consortium also concretised objectives, activities and established the work plan for the achievement of the first outcome of the project: the European framework of competences to implement the Sustainable Development Goals in small and medium-sized enterprises. This outcome, led by Portugal, is aimed at VET teachers, trainers and mentors working with staff in these small companies in order to establish a common language to describe competences, skills, knowledge and competence levels that can be understood across Europe. To do so, the framework will follow the European Standards and Reference Frameworks (EQFs) to convey the values and sustainability criteria of the SDGs to the employees of these SMEs.

The project, which will directly benefit around 100 workers from SMEs in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Turkey, who will participate in the pilots to test the results during its three-year duration, is aimed at VET teachers, trainers and mentors from European countries.