Save Water for an Horizon of Opportunities

Save H2O aims to develop a set of training materials and tools which will provide SME managers and owners, technical staff and technical experts from business support organisations and companies, with the skills and knowledge for the evaluation of the water footprint of European SMES to design well-adjusted strategies that help to reduce this footprint without significantly affecting competitiveness: in short the project aims to train a new professional figure, that of Water Footprint Manager.
The proposal is aligned with the EU and Erasmus + objective of enhancing the quality and relevance of the learning offer in vocational training by developing new and innovative approaches, focusing on the use of EU reference tools for the recognition, validation and transparency of competences and qualifications.
It is similarly aligned with the provision of competences in the green economy, more specifically by providing training materials and tools on a specific area of sustainability, i.e. the water footprint. 

The Project offers an innovative approach for: 
• Developing a training material which does not currently exist neither in the lead partner’s country nor in any of the others (except the Netherlands), adapting and improving the existing material; 
• Utilising new techniques to reinforce and adapt the basic paper or electronic based material for different end–users (SME's). 
• Creating a European model for this type and method of training that is also transferable, using ECVET reference model
The project has a generic core of skills and knowledge, suitable for all SME's, which aim to approach a new sustainable way to produce goods and services which can be expanded by elements adequate to the needs of specific countries and companies. Our project aims at:

• a geographical transfer, considering that the master materials are only available in one of the consortium's countries and there is a need and an opportunity to transfer and adapt them to different national contexts.
• performing a suitable integration of the transfer materials with the existing complementary materials on the specific needs and requirement of the companies in those national contexts.

The material and results being transferred by this new project can be adapted for the befits of different economic sectors: industry, manufacturing, tourism, services, agrofood can all benefit from the learning modules and tools provided by the project. Although the activities and training materials and plans of the project are aimed at SMEs in general, the consortium is aware that the productive sector is the highest generator of waste water, especially agrofood, textile and metal industries. As such, special attention will be paid and efforts will be made to involve SMEs from these sectors. Still, the materials and tools will be of interest to all SMEs irrespective of the sector, even because the problems concerning awareness and how to develop strategies for reducing the waterfootprint have many similarities across sectors.

The work-plan is organized on a 24 months basis and 3 main phases:

1. Analysis

2. Adaptation and Transfer of material

3. Validation and valorisation

Overall Management:

1. Overall coordination of the project (daily mgt, organisation of meetings, etc.)

2. Development of Quality Management Plan and quality controls 

Dissemination activities:

1. Publications of articles, news and press releases

2. Creation and maintenance of  project website

3. Preparation of 4-newsletter

4. Link to the project site on the websites of partners 

The main deliverable will be a complete training course, accessible as open educational resource online, addressed to European Small and Medium Sized Enterprises willing to reduce their impact on the environment while improving the competitiveness of their production systems.
The course will be a comprehensive programme able to train the new professional profile of Water Footprint Manager: companies will be trained to manage the water resources in a more sustainable and efficient way, also respecting the relevant European and national legislation.
The curriculum will be designed in order to guarantee its transferability and applicability in different European contents, thanks to the implementation of the ECVET system.

The course will be flexible and easy to use, developed on the specific needs of the target involved in a preliminary phase of research and analysis and then it will be fine-tuned during pilot test activities. 

The short term impact will hit primarily the SMEs and business support companies involved in the training needs analysis and the pilot tests, i.e. at least 40 in all Countries and 100 in Croatia, for a total of 300. In addition to those directly involved, dissemination and exploitation activities will raise awareness among the entrepreneurs, business support companies and VET providers that could be interested in exploiting the developed training in their educational offer. 
Moreover, the final conference is expected to have a wide visibility throughout Europe.

In the long run, if exploitation activities prove successful, as expected, European SMEs, in general, will benefit from the developed training. It is expected that interest and awareness about the topic of WF will increase in the forthcoming years, due to the national and European provisions on green economy and rational use of  natural resources - Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a framework for the Community action in the field of water policy. 
Also, VET providers and business support companies are expected to find the developed materials useful for the execution of their training courses for SMEs.

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