EU Water Challenge VET Labs

The objective we wanted to achieve was to involve European VET learners and trainers in the first international VET competition to explore and generate innovative NbS in order to solve a real-worl...

The objective we wanted to achieve was to involve European VET learners and trainers in the first international VET competition to explore and generate innovative NbS in order to solve a real-world challenge through VET education. The challenge was launched by the company Agbar, as how to improve urban water management through Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to make the city of ‘Metropolis’ a greener and healthier town for all, which was an invented and imaginary city combining features of a typical city like Viborg (Denmark), Barcelona (Spain) and Leuven (Belgium) so that to jointly emulate our different environmental contexts. The specific objectives (SO) we wanted to achieve were: -To develop innovative NbS through VET education by bringing together VET learners, teachers and schools around a European competition (SO1); -To contribute to achieve 21st century skills by solving a real-world challenge in the water sector (SO2); -To raise awareness about the potential of VET upon which to create real life solutions (SO3); -To improve quality of VET with the use of Challenge-based Learning (CBL) methodology between schools and business sector (SO4); -To facilitate access of companies to creative talent from VET schools (SO5)

*Phase 0: Coordination, Quality & Dissemination -M1: 1st project meeting in Barcelona: to welcome participants, introduce project, create of the 3 mixed groups, decide VET specializations involved and plan next steps. Agbar collected data on each city to start designing the Metropolis city and the specific challenge. *Phase 1: Launch of the Challenge & Exploration -A1: Informative Session of company: to introduce project, launch the challenge to groups, start with exploration of real solutions, present the CBL methodology, VET Labs, and register groups in virtual platform. *Phase 2: Creativity -A2: Creativity VET Lab: to generate/brainstorm diverse ideas to solve the challenge -M2: 2nd project meeting in Leuven *Phase 3: Prototype -A3: Prototype VET Lab: to generate real solutions/prototypes to the challenge in the form of mockups -M3: 3rd project meeting in Viborg *Phase 4: Accelerator -A4: Accelerator VET Lab: to elaborate a hand-out and the final presentation -M4: 4th project meeting *Phase 5: Awards -A5: Awards Ceremony: to present and demonstrate the final prototypes by each group in front of a public audience and the international jury members who awarded the prizes to winning group.

The concrete outputs and results achieved were the following: -Creation of a strong network of trust between both newcomers and experienced project partners; -Interest of VET learners and trainers about the importance of water challenges in the urban areas that Europe is currently facing; -Build of a virtual/platform as an online community for information and communications exchange of individuals, groups and company; -Acquisition of diverse transversal skills among VET learners and trainers after the process of exploration, creativity, prototyping and accelearing their solutions from scratch; -Formulation of a challenge in detail: 'how to improve urban water management through NbS to make the city of ‘Metropolis’ a greener and healthier town for all?'; -Design of an imaginary robot city called 'Metropolis' which includes a number of combined features from a typical city in Denmark, Belgium and Spain together so that to emulate the different environmental contexts in one single identikit city; -Handbook of Creativity, Prototyping and Acceleration with CBL methods and pedagogical tools for use of students; -3 physical prototypes/mockups: a tree bunker, a water catcher and a filter tower; -Manual of innovatiove NbS.