Erasmus+ – Green Apron

The project:

Green Apron reacts to the urgent demand for a Europe-wide food VET specialised in the area of plant-based cuisine. The meat-reduced cuisine is currently experiencing an unprecedented rising tendency. The hospitality trade has to take it into account to develop a new offer to address this new requirements of customers who are not more a niche. Moreover many people are changing their eating habits because of healthy reasons.

That is the reasons for a growing demand of skills to prepare balanced meals containing little or no animal products. The traditional vocational chef education and training (VET) in Europe does not yet consider the know-how and the skills for a sustainable and balanced cuisine with low or no content of animal products. The lack of knowledge in this field leads to insufficient skills of chefs and caterers to meet the new needs of their customers. In addition to customer demands, sustainability standards have become a major component within caterers’ corporate social responsibility policy. Considering a food selection of low CO2- equivalents is a practical form of environmental protection. Also the vast majority of the European population have unhealthy eating habits. In the White Paper “Nutrition, Obesity, Adiposity: A Strategy for Europe” the EU commission observes that the amount of overweight and obese children approximates 30% in 2007. Nutritional competence, as passed on to chefs through Green Apron, can help to implement a balanced and tasty choice of food in Europe’s restaurants.

To face these needs and request Green apron aims at developing the production and dissemination of a curriculum and training material of a 100-hour-module. Translated into 5 languages English, French, Italian Spanish and Romanian and enriched by modern multimedia content (3D-animated movies, e-learning modules, recipes videos,) the project results are exploited in the national educational systems. The Green Apron curriculum will be based on standards of the European Qualification Framework for lifelong learning (EQF) accredited according to ECVET parameters. (http://ec.europa.eu/eqf/home_en.htm)

The actions of the project are:

1. to develop a research: the training system in the different countries with a special focused on the hotel/cuisine training education.
2. to develop a common route of the 100 hour curriculum on plant-based diet following the EQF standards/ECVET qualification
3. to develop the Green Apron guide for training trainers/teachers on the use of the Green apron curriculum giving more detailed background information on teaching methods and lesson designs.
4. ICT tool. Producing 3 DVD 1 about healthy nutritional facts of a plant based diet and 1 about some video plant based recipes 1 about the ethical, healthy and environmental reasons for a plant-based cuisine.
5. checking and leveling the training material in accordance with ECVET procedures in partner organisations countries and provide leveling at around EQF level 4 which is workplace level qualifications
6. Training for trainers
7. Piloting the curriculum (experimentation of the milestone of the Green Apron curriculum and report of the results)
8. Evaluation and quality control