The project URBAN GReen Education for ENTteRprising Agricultural INnovation (URBAN GREEN TRAIN) created an innovative training path in the field of Urban Agriculture (UA) entrepreneurship, based on University-Society-Business Cooperation (USBC).The project was coordinated by the University of Bologna (Dept. of Agricultural Sciences, IT) and the consortium included excellent Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), innovative SMEs and NGOs of high-level expertise on different and complementary fields: UA, education, dissemination, HE, with partners from France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The project lasted 36 months, and created a model of curriculum and course in UA Entrepreneurship structured into five modules and topics:Module 1: Introduction into urban agriculture concept and typesModule 2: Resource use from a challenge perspectiveModule 3: Urban agriculture types/production systems and short food chainsModule 4: Networking and governanceModule 5: World of business and urban demands.The topic areas, provisionally identified during the proposal phase, have been re-designed according to the methodological guidelines presented in IO1 NEW URBAN AGRICULTURE INITIATIVES TOWARD A MINDSET CHANGE. IO1 presents new entrepreneurial models, training opportunities and needs resulting from the work undertaken by partners to update the state of the art of UA entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education, as well as to analyse training needs of the project target groups: SMEs, NGOs, HEIs, PAs. As result of this work, two inventories respectively of business and training opportunities in UA, were created and made available on the project web site at http://www.urbangreentrain.eu/en/?id=UA_Enterprises and http://www.urbangreentrain.eu/en/?id=UA_Enterprises&category=419. The five URBAN GREEN TRAIN MODULES AND RESOURCES (IO2) globally resulted in a training offer of 150 hours, including various types of educational resources, specifically developed by partners or collected among existing ones: presentations, articles, videos, images, eBooks, discussions, etc.The full set of modules was tested in a joint international pilot course, offered both fully online (on Moodle educational platform of the University of Bologna, IT) and in a blended modality (combining face to face and online training) and involving participants from different countries and professional backgrounds.The face to face part of the course was conducted through a 2 weeks intensive course in Bologna (IT), including a blended mobility for adult learners and a joint training staff event, aimed at strengthening knowledge and methodological exchanges.After the testing, the modules and resources were improved and translated in the partner languages (IT, DE, FR and NL) as well as in Portuguese, as additional language. The model of international curriculum developed during the project to serve as prototype for collaborative creation of further courses/curricula in UA entrepreneurship is illustrated in IO3 “MODEL AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A CURRICULUM IN URBAN AGRICULTURE ENTERPRENEURSHIP”. This output addresses non partner-HEIs, other training providers and public / private stakeholders and presents the main training actions and elements that define the URBAN GREEN TRAIN curriculum, accompanied by a set of recommendations. URBAN GREEN TRAIN was accurately disseminated in partner countries and across Europe to raise awareness on UA, and to support the opening of the path for innovative and sustainable cities. Several tools were developed for this purpose: the project web site www.urbangreentrain.eu (available in EN, FR, DE and IT), an e-Newsletter distributed periodically in four languages (IT,DE, FR, EN), a promotional video and a brochure presenting the main results and IO3 recommendations. Four national multiplier events (two in Germany, one in Italy, and one in the Netherlands) and one final international conference (in France), were organised in 2017, to launch the EU Cluster URBAN-AG and present the project results. The EU Cluster URBAN-AG involves more than 80 members from partner and non partner organisations, from several countries in Europe and beyond, representing different key actors and stakeholders in UA, as to promote knowledge and innovation exchange. URBAN GREEN TRAIN had a relevant impact on partner organisations and target groups (HEIs, SMEs, NGOs and PAs) and significantly contributed to strengthen the cooperation among Research, Education and Business and to modernise the HE system, also enhancing its role in building a sustainable economic and social growth. URBAN GREEN TRAIN succeeded in developing and offering a course and a model of curriculum in Urban Agriculture Entrepreneurship which gives a clear and comprehensive overview of the sector and its potentials, as well as a set of policy recommendations, as to serve as prototype for collaborative creation of further courses/curricula in urban agriculture.

"Food safety issues have reached a dramatic level in most Asian Countries. in its ""integration program"" ASEAN has put food security as one of its 12 priorities. It is abundantly documented that most of these problems are due to both qualitative and quantitative limitations in food safety management, mainly due to inadequate skills of workers, who often do not operate in compliance with the good practices for food safety and quality, and to a poor official control system. This lack at the level of human resources is strongly related to the lacks in the higher education system, the improvement of which is object of our proposal by: a. increasing the capacity of Asian partner'university's staff in the area of food safety and quality, by sharing experiences and organising training courses.b. training them in ""training engineering"" (TE) methodology, encompassing 2 wide surveys, first on the relationships between the education system and professionals (public & private) and second on their skill's needs; c. developing 3 training modules in food safety & quality, adapted to the professional needs, to be included into master programs, with credit transfer between partners. This has also to be seen as a ""practical exercise"" of TE for the project team. Increasing the teacher's capacities (a) and helping them building adapted training modules (b and c) will consequently make the graduates more proficient when starting their professional lives.d. enhancing the links between partner universities and professionals, in order to build a sustainable relationships between these 2 ""worlds"", essential requisite to better training and research. It is also planned to involved university's top management, on necessary changes towards professionalization and feasible adaptation in their management strategye. Finally, the project's results will be disseminated in the ASEAN countries, notably through short technical training modules and E-Learning modules for teachers & professionals."

The MS FSCC project brings five leading Southeast Asian higher education institutions in agriculture and life sciences from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia to build a joint master’s degree on the topic of Food Security and Climate Change. These HEIs have been working together within the Southeast Asian University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC) since 1989 and have a concrete experience of exchanges in Science and Academic programmes but never reached the level of building a joint degree. The MS FSCC was designed on the model of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees in Europe. It aimed at responding to acute needs in the professional sector that developed recently, where each individual university may not have all the disciplinary resources to address such topics at the highest (postgraduate) level. This difficulty is generally increased when the professional targets of the learning objectives lead to multidisciplinary orientations of teaching and research. A consortium of universities sharing common learning objectives and organising the mobility of students according to their individual academic strengths was assumed to be in a better position than individual Universities to produce graduates relevant to the market needs. This is the case with Food Security and Climate Change to prepare graduates to work at implementing the commitments of the member countries at the last Paris Conference on Climate Change, while taking into consideration the challenges of food security linked with the recent implementation of the ASEAN integrated market. This corresponds to a new professional challenge in the area of agriculture in SE Asia. The UC has the necessary skills to address this challenge, but individually, none have all the skills needed to properly address the training needs in this domain. Building a joint degree and using mobility to get the best offer in the region may better address that new challenge rather than what they would do individually. Simultaneously with the development of the synopsis of joint MS FSCC programme was the challenge of offering a dual/double degree, an innovation that the UC had never done before. By building common rules to govern within the MS FSCC: exchange/mobility of students, mutual recognition of courses between pairs of Universities within the UC, organisation of summer schools to offer courses to accommodate all students, option to have one semester mobility in Europe to complement the local supply of courses, FSCC-wide quality assurance system recognised by each of the collaborating Universities, and joint evaluation of master thesis between academic teams, Departments, Faculties of the different co-graduating Universities, the UC has experimented agreements that lead to building other post graduate joint programmes, a major institutional innovation in the SE Asian academic world. Whereas building this joint degree was much inspired by the European experience of the Erasmus Mundus programme, it required several adaptations and innovative rules in the participating Universities’ academic systems. These adaptations took more time than initially expected as it had to be accepted in five Universities in parallel and in real practice, for real students, in a real joint programme, and not just in theory. These innovations have been clearly identified, and at least they have been addressed in the case of a first collaborative programme, run with three successive cohorts of students.