Strategic Partnership Promoting the design and implementation of sustainable Erasmus + projects

<< Background >>ERASMUS+ programme is one of the main achievements of the European integration. Every year the programme supports more than 1M learning experiences abroad and funds more than 25,000 projects. But what is the environmental impact of those activities and mobility? How to reduce it? This is the core subject of SUSTAIN E+. Many professionals are involved in the development of ERASMUS+ projects. These professionals have different professional profiles; most of them learnt how to work with ERASMUS+ on the ground. Nowadays the programme insists, among other priorities, on the sustainable development and fight against climate change. SUSTAIN E+ arise from the need to train professionals in the implementation of sustainable ERASMUS+ projects. First, there is a need to evaluate the environmental impacts linked to the projects to be aware of our starting point and the alternatives will help us make better decisions. Then, increasing the level of knowledge and competences of the project staff in fields such as project efficient management, digital solutions, sustainable mobility, water and energy efficiency, circular economy, etc. will tackle the main areas of educational lacks to reduce the impact of the projects on environment.<< Objectives >>The main objective of SUSTAIN E+ has been to develop guidelines addressed to professionals involved in the development of ERASMUS+ projects that help them in the design and implementation of sustainable projects by reducing the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of the project activities. Thanks to Sustain E+, the staff working with ERASMUS+ is able to evaluate the environmental impact of the projects and know sustainable alternatives to make decisions to decrease it. To achieve this main objective, the activities of SUSTAIN E+ were focused on three specific objectives: SO1. Awareness raising from the professionals from the sector about their environmental impact, so that people working with ERASMUS+ projects be more concerned about their own impact and become more responsible when designing their projects; SO2. Training these professionals in the field of circularity and sustainability of EU projects to know the particular solutions that they can applied to reduce the impact of the project activities; SO3. Increasing the digitalisation of educational solutions, which was boosted by the COVID pandemic, and was proven to be a very effective way to reduce the carbon footprint. << Implementation >>By means of a collaborative work, partners analysed the activities developed within an ERASMUS+ project to identify the sources of pollution and defined best practices to improve the environmental performance; thus, they created an evaluation tool to assess the environmental impact of ERASMUS+ projects and provide guidelines for improvement.Partners worked together to developed training materials to teach ERASMUS+ professionals to design and implement projects considering sustainable criteria, and created a social-based training platform to encourage the exchange of knowledge and lessons learnt to implement more sustainable projects by sharing experiences and solutions. All materials were tested with ERASMUS+ professionals to check their quality and identify areas for improvement.In addition, partners organised events in Spain, Italy, Poland and Greece as a way to promote the project results and foster sustainability on ERASMUS+ projects. These events were held in accordance with the best practices explained in the training materials. All the project activities were supported by an efficient project management, designed with the aim of reducing the impact to the minimum, meaning fewer transnational meetings and more virtual meetings, zero paper, online management tools, sustainable events and a continuous reporting effort to spread the project achievements.<< Results >>As a main result, SUSTAIN E+ project had the ambition to respond to our main objective, the support of professionals working within the ERASMUS+ programme to design and implement more sustainable projects. This has been achieved through the production of three main results:- An evaluation tool to enable ERASMUS+ project staff to evaluate the impact of the decisions they make when designing and implementing a project. Users are asked 98 questions related on four sources of pollution: meetings or training, events, office activities and project management. The tool provides a total score that classify the project according to three levels, the higher of them is considered as deserving of the “sustainable project” badge. In addition, the tool provides the answers that would improve the sustainability of the project. It was tested with 54 ERASMUS+ projects.- A training set structured in nine modules: European projects and Sustainable Development Goals; Sustainable ERASMUS+ projects proposals; Working procedures; Digital management; Energy and water efficiency; Transport and mobility; Transnational meetings; Food sustainability in EU projects; Circular economy. The modules provide comprehensive explanations, case studies and practical exercises for learners and trainers.- A social-based training platform that brings together these modules on a digital and open format and beyond, connecting professionals working with ERASMUS+ to share practices and learn from mutual experiences. With these project outputs, SUSTAIN E+ aims to foster the implementation of more sustainable projects, encouraging better behaviours from all the participants in ERASMUS+ programme.