Sustainable Development and the responsibility of political, corporate and other actors for solving current social and environmental problems is one of the top priorities of international organizations such as the UN (UN Agenda 2030) as well as the European Union (EU Sustainable Development Strategy) and national and local governments.Higher Education institutions (HEI) play a crucial role in educating responsible future decision makers – in their role as managers, employees, consumers or investors. The UNESCO took up this idea by promoting concepts of “Education for Sustainability”. At the same time the PRME initiative of the UN Global Compact formulates six principles that higher education institutions should follow in order to support the formation of responsible future managers. There is an increasing number of teaching approaches that are designed with the aim of increasing awareness for CSR, changing attitudes and influencing behavior of individuals. However, tools for controlling the effectiveness of both the general approaches of higher education institutions as well as the specific teaching concepts are missing. The objective of the 3-year EFFORT project is therefore to develop tools and guidelines that support higher education institutions to increase the effectiveness and quality of sustainability-, ethics- and/or CSR-related teaching (in the following referred to as CSR-/sustainability-related teaching). The expected results consist of a tool for controlling the effectiveness of teaching formats (IO1), a Handbook/Toolbox presenting a systematically structured overview on currently existing innovative CSR-/sustainability-relatedd teaching concepts/courses (IO2), a self-evaluation tool allowing higher education institutions to benchmark themselves against other institutions (IO3), a number of new innovative teaching formats (IO4 - IO6) as well as a statistical analysis report (IO7) and a guideline (IO8) that shed light on which attributes of teaching concepts are most effective for educating responsible business leaders.Different target groups are addressed by the project. Main targets are higher education institutions (governing and administrative bodies, lecturers, technicians etc.) and their stakeholders (first and foremost the students, but also companies, regional/local/national governments, NGOs etc.). These target groups are addressed by facilitating high quality CSR-/sustainability-related education (HEI and other providers of vocational training and teaching) and increasing the awareness for sustainability challenges and the ways how to address them. The six partners are unified by the idea that CSR-/sustainability-related education is an important challenge of the future and need to be integrated holistically into policies and teaching of higher education institutions. They all have been active in different areas of sustainability education and partly have been working together in projects beforehand. Each partner bears a specific responsibility within the project, but is also co-responsible for the work packages and intellectual outputs generated by the other partners. The two associated partners (Principles of Resposnible Management Education (PRME) initiative and the Centre for Responsible Citizenship and Sustainability - Murdoch University) contribute with expert knowledge and for dissemination of the results.Regular project meetings should ensure the progress of the project and the contribution of each partner to the different intellectual outputs. Multiplier events serve as forums to communicate project results and to foster the further dissemination of knowledge. A number of other dissemination activities and follow-up activities ensure the long-term impact and sustainability of the project.

Circular economy represents an opportunity to address labour market imbalances and threats. Circular economy policies are expected to help reduce environmental impacts while generating higher levels of employment. As we move towards a more circular economy, it is estimated that GDP in the EU will increase by almost 0.5% by 2030. According to the Cambridge Econometrics, Trinomics, and ICF report (2018), there will be an estimated net increase in employment of approximately 700 000.During the next few years, the sectors that produce and process raw materials will decrease in size, while the waste management, recycling and repair sectors will experience extra growth.If a sustainable circular economy is to be implemented, the quality of those jobs is essential to their success, improving that quality through improving worker skills, including environmental, health and safety skills.For this reason, the CE-IP project aims to develop new training solutions that can help match the expected expansion of green job opportunities with skilled workers, to promote a shift towards a more sustainable economy.Our project will provide training solutions related to current jobs in the recycling sector, and new green and fair job opportunities for adults with low skills, including unemployed youth.The activities to be developed will focus on the generation of new skills and opportunities to access green and fair jobs, mainly related to the circular economy in terms of garment waste management.For this reason the project will focus on the circular economy of the textile sector.The target groups of the project are:- Self-employed, unemployed and low-skilled workers from other productive sectors.- Trainers of continuous training systems that provide courses for adults related to new employment opportunities.Thus, the main objective of the project is to achieve a systemic change in the skills and capacities of this target group.Other objectives are:- Promotion of self-employment linked to these activities in low-skilled workers.- Creation of new innovative training solutions related to opportunities in the circular economy.The Consortium that will develop the project is made up of six organizations from five countries:- Universitat Jaume I de Castellón as the project coordinator (Spain).- AEGARE- Asociación de empresarios gallegos en Aragón y riberas del Ebro (Spain).- Cologne Business School (Germany).- Social Innovation and Cohesion Institute (Greece).- Razvojna agencija Sotla (Slovenia).- CNIPA Puglia (Italy).A course on key concepts of Circular Economy will be held for 18 sustainability experts from the partner organizations to exchange ideas and generate a mutual understanding of the key concepts of Circular Economy and sustainability.In addition, the following intellectual outputs will be developed:IO1. Training guide on circular economy management strategies for microenterprises.IO2. Multimedia training resources with a 360º web base on good practices and innovative ways of extending the useful life of textile products.IO3. E-learning course for trainers on circular economy.In the development of this intellectual output, a pilot course for 60 trainers will be launched, the final result of which will be that every trainer will design a training course for unqualified adults.180 unemployed, self-employed and low-skilled workers will participate in the tests of the intellectual outputs of the project.The results expected from the implementation of the project include:- The development of teaching competences of adult trainers related to the circular economy.- Innovative training solutions in this field through the use of digital technologies.- To promote the circular economy through the generation of micro-enterprises in the activity of garment waste management (textile sector). - The development and dissemination of the circular economy as an employment opportunity for adults with low qualifications and in a situation of exclusion from the labour market, from other productive sectors.

Basic UN documents, e.g. the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SD) defines SD as one of the overarching priorities of the social, economic and environmental development of the countries. This Agenda defined 17 goals of SD to achieve by 2030. General objectives described by other UN documents were transformed into 10 principles by the United Nations Global Compact, which is a United Nations initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies. The ten mentioned principles covered the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Finally, higher educational institutions realised that they have the specific role to empower faculty, administrators, staff and students to be effective change agents and drivers of a more sustainable global society. To cope with the tasks stemming from this role a network PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) was set up and 6 sustainability principles relevant to the capacities and mission of the HE institutions were defined. The conceptualisation of the present proposal have been started along these goals and principles. The main, ambitious objective of the project is to help achieve these principles and goals by developing VET tools adapted to all human sections of a higher education institution.The few existing sustainability strategies of HE institutions integrate this strategy into their institutional development plans in very different ways. Here the partners realised that in the business sector there exists a tool, called Integrated Reporting (IR) giving a method and framework for the redaction SD plans overarching the activities of the enterprise. The same development for the HE institutions was in an early stage of its evolution and the partnership set the objective to elaborate an IR scheme for the HE institutions. The faculty is uniquely positioned to advance research and public discourse on environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Investments in research and education are the most effective way that a University can use its resources to contribute to worldwide sustainability efforts. This idea set the stage for the second thematic work package of the project: gathering best practices of the partners, even enterprises and analysing their adaptability to universities in general. This was helped by preparation of case studies, an issue which was studied at the Summer school the partners organised on-line during the project.Leading HEIs should ensure that their governance, faculty, staff and students not only understand sustainability, but also have the capacity to act sustainably and promote sustainable practices. Exposing all undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, faculty and staff, the main target groups of the project, to principles of sustainability is the necessary first step in that process. In order to do that the project defined the objective of developing contents and education tools with non-conservative pedagogical approaches – gamification - adapted to the different target groups of a university in a large number of SD issues. Another sort of target group was composed of the participants of the dissemination conferences: universities beyond the partnership, local and regional stakeholders (decision makers, banks, enterprises) and international organisations with SD profile. To reach these targets is the token of robust follow-up cooperation.The partners found that the already existing sustainability practices of the education institutions were divers and fragmented across fields, topics and courses. To remedy this the project strove for reaching across these boundaries and across partner universities. The main, long-term goal of the partners is not to consider sustainability as a standalone subject, or as added class hours at different individual classes, but rather a wholesale development of SD tools intertwined with education at its core. Partners have carried out the following activities: reviewing existing literature, researching on best practices, mapping stakeholder expectations, developing new solutions (IR and Toolbox) and piloting them. Dissemination of the results was considered of utmost importance of this project. The invitation of representatives of two large networks with SD focus to the partnership underlines this priority.It is to be mentioned that the partners have been able to manage the project in the pandemic circumstances through digitalisation all activities.