RAISE Kick-off Meeting — Strong Start for a Truly Collaborative Journey
This week, the RAISE - Resilience and Innovation for Sustainable Education consortium came together for its Kick-off Meeting, marking the official start of a capacity-building Erasmus+ initiative focused on strengthening VET providers in the Western Balkans (Albania and Montenegro).
Over the sessions, partners aligned on the project vision and first steps to help educators and training managers drive change through:
- Green thinking-focused educational practices;
- Pedagogical innovation, including XR and AI in teaching and learning;
- (re)design of learning spaces to be more collaborative, engaging, and eco-friendly;
- Labour-market oriented methodologies, ensuring training remains closely connected to real workplace needs and employability outcomes.
The atmosphere was genuinely positive — a strong sense of collaboration, shared ownership, and enthusiasm for what we can achieve together over the coming months.
🙏 A big thank you to all participants for the constructive discussions and commitment, and to our Associated Partner Centro Tecnológico del Mar - FUNDACIÓN CETMAR for joining us at the start of this new journey and helping to connect the project with the wider ecosystem.
What Skills Do We Really Need for the Future of VET?
📅 On 18 March 2026, the RAISE project brought together education providers and industry stakeholders in Tirana to answer exactly that. The first Roundtable Event (WP2) was organised by the Polytechnic University of Tirana (UPT) and Tirana College of Technology (KPT), focusing on identifying real training needs, gaps, and opportunities in sustainability and digital transformation within STEM education.
Through a mix of presentations, stakeholder discussions, and interactive workshops, participants validated key findings and helped shape the direction of the project.
What stood out:
- Stronger, structured collaboration between education and industry is no longer optional
- Digital skills (especially AI-related) require continuous curriculum updates
- Hands-on, practice-oriented learning must be prioritised
- Soft skills are as critical as technical competences
- Long-term institutional partnerships need to be reinforced
These insights will directly feed into the RAISE Training Needs Report and Strategic Framework, ensuring that outcomes are grounded in reality — not assumptions.
If we want relevant education systems, we need to co-create them with those who use them.
