Students from CETB Tramore Road Campus, Cork participate in European project called SIVE (Sustainability in Vocational Education).  

Amandine LeBrun 

My name is Amandine and I study Horticulture as a mature student at CETB, Tramore Road Campus, Cork. I was fortunate to be part of the SIVE (Sustainability In Vocational Education) project funded by the CETB and Erasmus+. We travelled to Brakel in the district of Höxter in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany to meet with teams from Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Spain, Turkey, and Germany. The primary aim of the gathering was to exchange best practices and projects pertaining to Biodiversity and Travel on our respective campuses. 

We gave a presentation on our efforts to preserve and increase habitats for biodiversity here as well as our future strategies to encourage students and staff to use sustainable ways of transport to reach the school. There were multiple opportunities to exchange and getting to know the other teams as well as finding out what they were doing in their own countries. During our stay we were taken to visit different sites around Brakel, ranging from a medieval open-air museum to a bison sanctuary and to a regenerative farm. We all travelled by train and buses which offered brilliant views of the dense forests and their stunning autumn colours. 

All in all, this was a great opportunity to discover Germany and its people as well as finding ways to bring Sustainability and Vocational Education in Europe together. 

Roisin Taormina

My name is Roisin Taormina and I am a Horticulture student at CETB, Tramore Road Campus in Cork. I had an amazing opportunity to visit Germany on an Erasmus project about sustainability in vocational education or S.I.V.E. The topics for this mobility were biodiversity and transport. I found the trip to be very informative, I learned a lot, not only about Germany, its history, culture in the local area but also about potential ways in which we could incorporate ideas about how to tackle issues around biodiversity and transport into our local environment and on our campus. During our stay in Germany all countries/colleges involved gave a presentation to explain how they tackle the issues at hand and also challenges they face. I thought this was a good idea and I hope that every college took some knowledge back to utilize. 

We went on a few fieldtrips around the local area to observe and learn about Germany, what is being done there regarding biodiversity and preservation of the environment. We went to and outdoor Museum, which showed us how farms and villages worked in the 18th & 19th century. I found this very informative, while we visited this location, I noticed that they still utilized the area to raise sheep, working horses, farm the land for sugar beet and even had the original old bakery still in working order. On one of the days we went to a forest in Hammerhof, Noth Rhine-Westphalia. This forest is primarily broadleaf, the forester gave us a description and introduction to the history of this area and told us of bark beetle which unfortunately killed approx. 95% of all the spruce. He believed the fact that the trees were planted together in a block made them weak and more susceptible to bark beetle, we visited this location and looked at the bark. He also explained how in the future they will be trying to have a variety or trees and not block plant trees anymore. He also talked about sustainable forestry and the system they use. The visit to the forest was probably my favourite part as I found it to be very informative and I really appreciated what they were doing there. Overall, I took a lot of knowledge away from our trip and I feel like I am more informed and excited to try to implement and tackle sustainability issues that we face here in Ireland.