Summary

The main objective of the project is to contribute in improvement of environmental protection efficiency of Serbian local communities in order to achieve European dimension of ecological integrity as a key element of sustainable community. Based on EU experience and with the help of West institutions, Serbian university-expert JEP consortium will design and deliver two vocational ecological courses for building of human resources responsible for sustainable environmental management. These courses would be related to next general areas: Solid Waste Management and Energy Efficiency.

To introduce EU standards in practical and targeted, demand-driven education, Serbian teachers besides their knowledge on environmental protection issues must be accompanied by special skills needed for development and implementation of training courses for different non-academic target groups. Also, to facilitate the process of knowledge transfer and to make courses more attractive for target groups, upgrading of current teaching equipment must be made. In order to reach these goals, experience of European partners will be used through retraining of Serbian teachers and support in the process of training facilities upgrading and establishing of Regional ECO training centre at the University of Kragujevac. Retraining of Serbian staff will be carried out by training assignments of European experts in Serbia (workshops “training of trainers”) and by retraining periods for Serbian teachers in West universities and institutions. During retraining activities, members of project team will also close collaborate on development of related teaching materials that will be disseminated to participants of the ecological training courses. Ecological training courses for capacity building of local community should be aimed for the education/training of:

Local governmental officers responsible for environmental protection,
Professionals from environmental public services,
Professionals from industry responsible for ecological issues,
Members of environmental NGOs.

During project life, designed training courses for beneficiary groups from Central Serbia will be realized (once a year) at University of Kragujevac. Participants will be selected according to their experience, basic knowledge of environmental problems and the capacity to apply acquired knowledge in their institutions. It is foreseen to provide at least 50 trainees for each course that would lead to 100 trained staff during the project life. Through the combination of presentations, exercises, group workshops and case studies, course participants will be introduced with up-to-date developments and the best practice in area of the environmental management adopted in EU. The establishment of Regional ECO training centre at University of Kragujevac and upgrading of training/teaching facilities will create the stable capacity to serve the local communities in Central Serbia by information, training and co-operation on environmental issues. The purchase of modern audio-video equipment, related software and gaining qualifications in development of multimedia presentations will significantly contribute to the improvement of the training/teaching process in general. The ECO Training centre at University of Kragujevac will play a key role in the process of environmental public awareness rising. Using its infrastructure, Internet portal will be set-up, providing a constant flow of information about project results. Also, within the Internet portal, Serbian staff will build a pilot local environmental information system for the monitoring of environmental state in Kragujevac that could be the base for the future National Environmental Information System. Since the project is fully in accordance with national priorities, it is reasonable to expect that the University and local and regional administrative bodies will recognize achieved results and will take the responsibility for maintaining and developing the system in the future. At the end of the project, ecological training courses should be properly defined and structured, and the Regional ECO training centre should be fully operational. Therefore, further operation can be also self-funded by imposing economical course fees on participants of the courses that should be constantly given after the completion of this Tempus project.

The project will also have effects on restructuring and democratization of local politics and administration because relatively big number of officials and professionals in the local communities, as well as environmentalists from the NGOs, will become acquainted with contemporary methods of environmental management. It will contribute to increase of the public participation in making local environmental decisions that is in compliance with the EU accessing demands and acquis communautaire.

Tempus SERBIA