Partners.Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training of 7 partners: Hungarian Quality Compost Association (HU), Diversity Foundation (HU), Ruskin Mill Trust (UK), Tiszasas Municipality (HU), WWOOF Hungary (HU), University of South Bohemia (CZ), Agricoltura Capodarco (IT)
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Project Leader
Hungarian Quality Compost Association
Founded in 1999 at the Agricultural University in Gödöllő (SZIU). The aim was to develop an organization centre for biological waste management, to represent composters' interests, to coordinate and promote research and development projects, and establish a compost quality assurance system in Hungary. Similarly to the German Compost Quality Assurance Association, the Association working on an overall compost assurance system in Hungary because there is a great demand on quality products on the producers’s part and on compost users’s part as well. Quality compost can be produced only with an integrated and strongly controlled assurance system. According to the original aims detailed above, one of its main goals is to familiarize people with modern waste handling (first of all biodegradable waste) and composting. In order to strengthen its social role in society by combining professional knowledge with social care, it follows its deep belief that “by revitalizing the soil – the basis of life - we revitalize the soul as well”.
Project Partners
Diversity FoundationFounded in 2007. Its main aim is to foster equal opportunities in the labor market, to help the integration of disadvantaged people into the workplace and everyday society. Its integration tools include individual counselling and job placement for jobseekers and disadvantaged persons, equal opportunity counselling and sensitization trainings for employers, disability-specific trainings for teachers and care-givers, organizing awareness events for relevant institutions, families and citizens. In the last few years it organized mainly autism-specific trainings for kindergarten and nursery teachers, and its awareness programs also focused on autism, as the number of affected people is increasing and the professional knowledge is also constantly expanding. The Foundation is working in the central region of Hungary, mainly in Gödöllő and the surrounding area. Its main target groups are disabled people and people living in poverty, as well as the local employers and institutions.
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Ruskin Mill TrustBased Gloucestershire, in England is one of four specialist colleges operated by Ruskin Mill Trust (RMT) offering both day and residential provision. RMT comprises over 700 staff members (paid and volunteers) and over 240 students. It has expertise in working with young people aged 16-25 with complex behavior and learning difficulties and disabilities, including autistic spectrum conditions, whose needs cannot be met elsewhere. Since 1986, hundreds of students have benefitted from the Trust’s innovative Practical Skills Therapeutic Education program that draws its inspiration from Rudolf Steiner, John Ruskin and William Morris. It’s practical skills curriculum is a three-year course. It provides an exciting and wide range of course subjects that give students the opportunity to learn through doing real-life purposeful activities that enhance their intellectual, emotional and physical health.
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Tiszasas MunicipalityTiszasas is a little Hungarian village in Jász-Nagykun- Szolnok county, near the river Tisza with 1100 residents. The main income of the local families derives from agricultural activities, mainly from crop production and horticulture. Unfortunately, the living standard is lower, and the rate of unemployment higher, than the Hungarian average. That was the reason why the municipality decided to create a valuable job opportunity for the local population in the field of
horticulture. Tiszasas actively participated in the “Start” community employment programme, which was organised and financed by the Hungarian government. Within the framework of the programme they started (from 2011) to produce different types of vegetables such as red pepper, peas, cucumber, sweet pepper, tomato, potato, etc. with a regular employment of 25 unemployed local people for a fixed 8 month period. The vegetables produced are used in local restaurant and local canteen, operated by the municipality. |
WWOOF HungaryFounded in 2009 a non-profit organisation formed by 10 colleagues. Its partners are 30 organic farms and about 200 volunteers every year. Its main activity is to manage the voluntary network WWOOF in Hungary, but it is involved in many other projects. One of these is the “Living and Learning in Organic Farms” where they produce learning material for volunteers and young adults interested in organic agriculture. The LLOOF project is started as an Erasmus+ funded partnership with 9 other WWOOF organisations in Europe back in 2014. Another really important project is happening in Bercel, Nograd county, which is one of the most underdeveloped areas of Hungary. WWOOF is establishing an organic farm which will serve as a model for social/green care farming. It is the founding members of the Hungarian Social Farming Society, and work together with multiple educational institutions from primary education to universities in order to try to make its projects successful at practical level.
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University of South BohemiaUniversity of South Bohemia in České Budějovice have 15 000 students and will be represented by the Faculty of Agriculture. The Faculty of Agriculture has long term experience with multifunctional farming, and as a result of the cooperation with the faculties of Health and Social Studies, Pedagogy and Economics, the faculty of Agriculture is preparing bachelor courses in Social farming (to be formally accredited). The bachelor course in Multifunctional Farming also contains the subject of Social farming, and this topic is equally included in other study subjects: Development of sustainable farming systems; Agro environmental practice; Organic and alternative agriculture; as well as in the study of Agroecology, Sustainable farming systems in agricultural landscape. The Faculty of Agriculture has been developing practical cooperation with stakeholders in the sector of organic farming and these also include social farms, NGO´s, therapists, policymakers, etc., all of it happening in simultaneous cooperation with Ministry of Agriculture, who actively participates in the development of social farming and in fact pioneers the whole field of Social Farming education in Czech Republic.
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Agricoltura CapodarcoAn organic multifunctional farm on the outskirts of Rome, founded in 1978 as an offshoot of the Community Capodarco of Rome. In 1978 the community was created in Grottaferrata (Rome) and started agricultural activity with a group of disable and disadvantaged people. Capodarco was born as a B Type social cooperative with the aim of including disadvantaged people in the labour market but, at the same time, it supplies many social services. The farm has progressively reinforced links within the local area, answering several needs and requests expressed by local health and social services or directly by families. Agriculture activity has also been developed including helping other organisations with conversion to organic farming and the certification of their products.
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