The final event of the project “Akuo EduLab” was held at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, organized by the company “Akuo”, in partnership with the association “Eko Logic” and the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University “Goce Delcev” – Shtip, with the support of the Embassy of France in the Republic of North Macedonia.
Part of the event was a Round Table on the topic “EduLab: From Classroom to Community – Building Competencies for Sustainability through Education”.
The project “Akuo EduLab” enabled students of educational sciences, primary school teachers and students to work together on topics related to sustainability, renewable energy sources, biodiversity and climate challenges.
– The Faculty of Educational Sciences entered this project a few months ago with particular pleasure, because our French partners, as well as the NGO, helped in the whole work so that we could transfer to students some of the competencies that are important not for the future but for the present. Ecology, biodiversity, environmental problems are problems of today, not tomorrow, and the Faculty of Educational Sciences is grateful and happy to be part of this project – said the Dean of FON, Prof. Dr. Trajce Stojanov.
Aleksandra Sombstay, Executive Vice President for Public Relations at “Akuo”, emphasizes that her company wants to contribute to education in addition to operating in production.
– We conducted a series of workshops together with the students from the UGD, in order to transfer knowledge and technology, how projects are implemented in an environment such as Macedonia and in an environment such as the EU. Our focus was, after training the students, that they further train students in primary schools. “Akuo” is a French company that manufactures equipment for the production of solar energy. The company’s goal was not only production, but also to position itself in Macedonian society and create synergy with students and citizens.
Directly involved in the activities were the professors from FON, Snezana Stavreva-Veselinovska and Despina Siveska.
– The title of the project is Green Transfer – building green competencies among teachers and future educators among our students. Within the framework of this project, we worked on two modules, agrivoltaics, ecosystem and education for sustainable development. Lectures were held for students from the Pedagogy and Classroom Teaching departments. The goal was to train them on how to build green competencies and how to incorporate all that knowledge into other subjects. Unfortunately, in the education system in the Republic of Macedonia in the nine-year primary education, secondary education, and even higher education, environmental education and upbringing, as well as education for sustainable development, is not represented as a mandatory subject. Hence, by initiating it, pedagogy and education are facing new challenges – how to create aware and responsible citizens. The goal is not for us as university professors to prepare them not only for what we teach them as subjects, but also for a new future, because the world is facing serious environmental disasters. An initiative should already be taken at the national level to introduce such content into the education system – said Prof. Dr. Snezana Stavreva-Veselinovska.
Jasmina Petrovska-Neshkovska, a representative of the Citizens’ Association “Eco Logic”, with a focus on environmental protection and sustainable development, said that they place great focus on formal and informal education, starting from preschool age, primary and secondary education, and even adult education and vocational education.
– In this project, “Eco Logic” is actually an organization responsible for implementation. The success of this project is the merit of all our collaborators, educators, professors, who actually created modules that can then be used by all teachers throughout Macedonia, thus introducing a slightly different education than what we have so far. Non-formal education, including experimental work and so on. The fact that the University “Goce Delcev” assigned us professors in the project made it successful and today we are at the final event. The goal is to transfer sustainable education to students. We trained 23 teachers from primary schools in Stip, but also students who will then be able to present all these climate changes that we are facing today, in a different way to children, as experimental work – said Jasmina Petrovska-Neshkovska from “Eko Logic”.
The results of the project, the experiences of the participants and the possibilities for the “Akuo EduLab” model to be applied in other educational environments were presented within the framework of the event.
