<< Background >>According Eurostat and OECD statistics, 72% EU population lives in urban areas. Results shows constant growth of cities and population density and urban transformation especially in CEE EU countries as consequences of commercialisation and densification of inner-city areas and expansion of built-up space which devour in green areas what causes people disconnection from nature. Urban trees play an important role in the fields of climate change, social and health well-being and economy, removing air pollutants, reducing surface temperatures, mitigating wind effects, reducing storm water, providing shade, recreational and aesthetic benefits and enable social interaction and decline in use of healthcare facilities. Unfortunately urban tree mortality in EU is at a shocking level with low average lifespans 7-28 years while their rural counterparts can live up to 100 years. The reasons occur due to inadequate maintenance of urban trees and poorly provision of a properly educated workforce. Urban areas are facing skills gaps as workers often LACK BASIC KNOWLEDGE and ESSENTIAL SKILLS in the field of ARBORICULTURE which mostly relate to: -improper planting techniques and maintenance, -poor knowledge of tree species and their characteristics, -inadequate identification of diseases and pests, -physical damage due to improper pruning, -inappropriate soil treatment and watering,-insufficient removal of invasive plant species that suppress tree growth, -use of inappropriately or tight tree supports, -planting trees in too small or shallow spaces.Also, there is vast difference between the techniques and practices among professional arborists who obtain certificates mainly at the EQF level 5 and 6 EQF level 4 arborist profiles are severely lacking - trained tree workers who simply maintain trees on a daily basis. This is a case especially in project partners’ countries where students of VET programs (EQF level 4) Forestry, Gardening and Horticulture get some but not sufficient arboriculture knowledge within other school subjects. In partners’ countries, there is almost no provision of formal or non-formal programs in this field which would offer students the acquisition of competences on EQF 4 level.The European Arboricultural Council vision is to ensure healthier and longer living trees in towns, parks, gardens to beautify Europe and increase the number of more competent tree care professionals.Therefore, the project Arbor Tech addresses professional approach to described demands of urban greenery through the adequate VET program (EQF level 4) to ensure basic arboriculture knowledge, skills and competences and train the students/ participants and teachers to implement it. The VET program ‘Urban arborist’ will be developed and basic arboriculture knowledge and essential skills needed for basic urban tree maintenance will be provided to perform quality work in the field of arboriculture.<< Objectives >>Project Arbor Tech strives to ensure the urgent need for green skills as the EU strives to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Among the professional recommendations for maintaining an urban environment, it can be seen that periodic tree care can only be performed by a professional arboricultural providers dealing with planting, pruning and other arboricultural practicesTherefore the general aim of the project is to assure professional approach to described demands of urban greenery through the adequate VET program (EQF level 4) to ensure basic arboriculture knowledge, skills and competences and train the students/participants and teachers to implement it. This will be achieved with the concrete objectives:1. Comprehensive assessment of educational needs between service providers in the field of arboriculture and sufficiency of basic contents in VET gathered in a joint report 2. Development and implementation of the new and innovative VET curriculum ‘urban arborist’ and related contents for students and its integration in open curriculum of existing formal VET programs and in non-formal education and validation through the use of ECVET reference standard and EQF framework level 4.3. Setting up an educational e-learning platform for blended learning ’urban arborist’ with interactive visual and textual learning materials to transform, complement and improve the learning process via digital way5. Setting up a dendrology laboratory as a concrete/ physical learning unit for practical learning and virtual laboratory (vDIab) which will complement in-person learning process via digital way4. Development and implementation of in-service teacher training to conduct training for ‘urban arborist’ with emphasis on inclusion of participants with fewer opportunities for which a specialized guidelines will be developed for this purpose6. Promotion of arboriculture and its importance for urban areas through further education, adult education and non-formal education and validation through the use of European references tools.<< Implementation >>In order to achieve our objectives we will apply following activities:Comprehensive assessment of educational needs between service providers in the field of arboriculture and sufficiency of basic contents in VET gathered in a joint report . This objective will be reached by the following activities:-conducting analysis based on the determined methodology-Providing data for each participating country-selection of examples of good practices of educational offers in EU in line with minimum criteria set.-collecting, comparing and summarizing of data collected;-production and design summary of findings, collected in a joint report 3.Development and implementation of the new and innovative VET curriculum ‘urban arborist’ and related contents for students and its integration in open curriculum of existing formal VET programs and in non-formal education and validation through the use of ECVET reference standard and EQF framework level 4. Activities that will help us reach this goal are:-Preparing special instructions for structuring the curriculum ‘Urban Arborist’– -Setting up (presumably) 4 modules based on R1 findings-Specifying contents for each module separately-Determination of all parts of the General part of curriculum and specific parts of the modules-Defining of the objective and contents of the theoretical and practical In-service teacher training (LTT activity) -Selecting the format of the training material for each module-Designing contents of the training modules in selected training material format-2 Pilot testing of the Curriculum with teachers on LTT activity (In-service teacher training) and with students (in formal VET and non-formal VET (employees)4. Setting up a dendrology laboratory as a concrete/ physical learning unit for practical learning and virtual laboratory (vDIab) which will complement in-person learning process via digital way. In order to reach this objective we will perform the following tasks: g.Determination the methodology of collecting, organizing and classifying of material necessary for the Dendrology lab h.Collecting physical materials in line with the determined methodology i.Photographing of the collected materials j.Positioning of the materials in the dendrology lab in an organised wayk.Preparing textual material for the vDlabl.Collecting and uploading the graphical material to vDlabThis activities also support objective 2 and 3, because they are interrelated (there cannot be good arboricultural training without basic dendrology knowledge)5. Development and implementation of in-service teacher training to conduct training for ‘urban arborist’ with emphasis on inclusion of participants with fewer opportunities for which a specialized guidelines will be developed for this purpose. - This objective will be reached through LTT activity, which will take place in the last stages of the project and will also serve as a pilot testing of the curriculum, training contents and training platform, so it will also serve reaching objectives no. 2 We will reach objective of inclusion of people with fewer opportunities (especially mild disabilities) by developing guidelines for employers, that will help them to distinguish abilities in employees, delegate the right tasks with proper adaptations.6. Promotion of arboriculture and its importance for urban areas through further education, adult education and non-formal education and validation through the use of European references tools.<< Results >>The main outcomes of the project are 6 project results: R1 – 3 National and 1 Summary report on the state of the art on VET in arboriculture in participating countries and EU. This result will give us a comprehensive overview of existing VET programmes in formal and non-formal education for arborists and will thus enable us to find gaps between the training needs (based on the experience of employers in this field) and supply in the field of arboriculture. It will also include presentation of existing good practices of arboriculture training in Europe and will also present an awareness raising toolR2 – a basis for a good arboriculture technician is recognition of wooden plants, so during this result we will set up a dendrology lab in three participating schools and we will also establish virtual dendrology lab (vDlab), that will support on spot recognition of wooden plants.R3 – based on the National & Summary Reports we will design a curriculum to obtain basic arborist knowledge, essential skills and needed competences (including transversal) . The curriculum will thusus serve as a basis for the next project result:R4 – Based on the curriculum structure and in line with EQF level 4, we will develop training contents for blended learning program: Urban arborist. The practical part of contents (formative) will be implemented face to face, while the online part of the training contents will be available on the developed:R5 – Training platform for blended learning program: Urban Arborist will be developed in line with stat-of-the art digital technologies, including different interactive apps that will enable better and versatile learning experience for the students. Part of the training platform will include also vDlab. The most powerful part of the training platform will be the fact, that the “urban arborist” will be able to have the platform in their pockets (smartphone compatible) and will be able to use it with their day to day work in arboriculture, which will enchance their learning experience even more and even after the end of the program. After the training platform will be established and training contents uploaded to the platform, we will perform two pilot tests: -among teachers in the form of joint staff training event (LTT activity) for 12 participants (teaching staff).- among students (including secondary VET students and employees in relevant companies dealing with aroboriculture) – 45 participantsBesides pilot testing of the curriculum, contents and the platform, the LTT will also serve as an in-service teacher training with objective to train and empower teachers to be able to carry out VET program ‘Urban Arborist’ for studentsR6 – At the final stage of the project, we will prepare Guidelines for employers for inclusion of people with mild disabilities in arboriculture. In this result we will present how to include people with different disabilities in task related to arboriculture according to their abilities, and demonstrate how to make necessary adaptations in order for them to perform those tasks as effective as possible. WIth this result, we would like to increase inclusion of people with disabilties on the workplaces, because we also educate these students and we know they are capable of proper employment.Besides those 6 results, we will also have other results related to other work packages Management, Monitoring and Evaluation and Dissemination and Exploitation-Management&administrative guidelines-4 transnational project meetings and 4 virtual ones-established project management platformWP Monitoring and evaluation:-established Monitoring and evaluation committee-Project risk analysis-5 financial reports -2 general evaluation reports +-14 specific evaluation reportsWP Dissemination and exploitation:-project graphic design-project sub webpage on PPs’ websites-profiles on social media-mailing lists-4 Newsletters-advertisement on informative channels-informative project brochure