Education for Systemic Resilience: Twinning for Community-Based Technical Education (CBTE) and Hazard Prevention

About

We invite European Technical Universities, TVE innovators, and disaster risk reduction specialists to co-lead a transformative twin project. This initiative directly links the hands-on development of local technical talent with the operational needs of community resilience. It proposes establishing a “Community-Based Technical Education (CBTE) framework” twinned with EU institutions, where students and trainees build, deploy, configure, and maintain the very monitoring and AI systems that safeguard their environment, using locally generated data to learn and to power early warning indicators.

OUR APPROACH AND VALUE ADDED:

We propose a “Pedagogy of Implementation and Hardware Piloting.” Our consortium provides the ecosystem: the VET schools, the community projects needing tech solutions, and the territorial mandate. The educational program is a living lab, structured around real-world projects: building and configuring sensor nodes and LoRa gateways, assembling ESP32-based devices (like the civic intercom), installing utility metering systems, and fine-tuning local Small Language Models (SLMs) for data analysis. Our value is in ensuring education is the engine for sustaining the community's entire digital transformation, bridging the classroom, the workshop, and the field.

EXPECTED RESULT AND NEED FOR COOPERATION:

The final result is a self-reinforcing cycle of skills, technology, and safety. Education builds local capacity, which deploys and maintains the technology, which generates data for AI and warnings, which in turn strengthens high-value local markets and community resilience. Outputs include co-designed CBTE curricula, open-source hardware/software toolkits and pilot production lines for educational devices, and a pilot community equipped with both a hazard early-warning system and the skilled personnel to build and manage it. We seek European partners to contribute with:

• Leading-edge competency frameworks and curricula for teaching IoT hardware assembly, LoRa network configuration, embedded systems (ESP32), and localized AI/data analytics in applied community-focused settings.

• Direct experience in “living lab” pedagogical models and in co-developing durable, educational-grade hardware prototyping and pilot production kits.

• Expertise in translating multi-source environmental data into simple, community-understandable hazard indicators and early warning protocols.

• Strong interest and experience in co-submitting to Erasmus+ Capacity Building for VET, Horizon Europe Cluster 2 (inclusive societies, skills), Cluster 6 (disaster resilience), and bilateral/region-to-region education, science, and innovation programs.

PROFILE OF THE EUROPEAN PARTNER SOUGHT:

We seek pioneer institutions: Polytechnics with strong hardware labs and regional engagement, VET schools leading in digital and green skills, and research groups specializing in citizen science, fab labs, and disaster risk communication. The ideal partner sees twinning as a co-creation pact to build a new model of territorially embedded, technology-powered education, where piloting hardware is a core pedagogical and operational outcome.