Reflecting on the Green Skills Summit
AELP hosted the Green Summit on the 3rd February, held at 15 Hatfield Gardens, 15 Hatfields conference and events venue – a stone’s throw from Waterloo.
Great event with great delegates and an abundance of content. I am still exploring ‘what do we mean by ‘Green Skills”? We talked about technical skills, knowledge, behaviours, values, attitude, mind set even dark green and light green skills, which I particularly liked.
Several points were loud and clear:
- We need to apply sustainability around funding, lets value every opportunity and not duplicate.
- Let’s elevate The Governments Net Zero Strategy (October 2001) to Net Positive.
- As a collective let’s embrace the responsibility to take the lead of the endeavor to deliver the workforce of the future, by becoming educated ourselves
- Let’s understand the many different stages’ the consumers are, in their journey.
- It’s all about our talent – both existing talent and our pipeline of talent, and the interventions and skills needs will be different.
- Taking an integrated approach is essential, working with and not against, and aligning not duplicating work streams to ensure consistency and the sustainability of sustainability.
The summit table discussions echoed in Great Jobs Report Feb 2022 by City & Guilds, including recommendations for educators, such as – the value of CIAG and the importance of basing it on local data and furthermore the need to position green skills as a functional skill, or as the Great Jobs Report position it, as a ‘horizontal skills thread…across all industries’, such as digital, numeracy, literacy, and leadership.
A solution for increasing green skills includes, a greater embrace of technology by using virtual reality and create virtual environments where learners can experience skills and apply their learning. The very nature of virtual environment learning is to provide real life experiences, immediate application of learning, widen access and reach and of course value for money. Having entered the next level of digital learning, virtual learning is now leading the race with 91% of users preferred V-Learn over classroom and e-learning*
The light bulb moments were discussions around green skills and occupations such as Retrofit and Electric Vehicle Charging Points’ Installation, because this is where Metaverse Learning can play a pivotal role. Working with education and industry we develop immersive virtual environment learning programs to support curriculum by providing the invaluable e-practical experiences for learners as a final stepping-stone to the workplace.
Ismail Bentil from The Forward Trust shared, for me the greatest message, ‘I can experience beauty in the world because of the people before me and we must do the same for people in the future’
By Kathryn Porter, Partnerships Director, Metaverse Learning
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