Welcome to the first blog article of the “GreenVETers project: Embedding citizen deliberation and deliberative democracy for sustainable development into the official VET curricula”! The GreenVETers project aims to enhance the democratic competences of Vocational Education and Training (VET) educators and trainers, particularly in Engineering and Agriculture courses.
As climate change has brought a huge toll on human societies and Earth’s ecosystems, it is important to engage all citizens in collective efforts to mitigate its consequences. In this context, we believe that the active involvement of the VET sector (students and professionals) should give individuals the opportunity to participate in public discussions designed to shape public climate policies. To achieve this, we explore citizen deliberation as a practice to be integrated into VET schools’ curricula. Through citizen deliberation, VET students and educators will become familiar with democratic values, deliberation practices and therefore, become more engaged in public discussions on climate change and policies.
Whats’ more, the GreenVETers project addresses participation in democratic life not only as a means to broaden civic engagement in environmental debates, but also to mitigate disinformation, while ensuring that citizens remain the driving forces behind the transition to sustainability.
The first result of the project will be the publication of a Handbook on the Green Deal and Citizen Deliberation. The Handbook is designed to help VET educators understand the basic concepts and comprehend the correlation between citizen deliberation and the Green Deal. Overall, the Handbook aims to incentivize VET trainers to engage in and adopt citizen deliberation in their courses in order to empower VET students to actively engaged in action against climate change in their communities.
Stay tuned to our website for more articles, stories and news to come!
