BIO-BAKERS IN SERVICE

Environmental issues are still the objectives set for 2030 (Green Deal) and in this context we identified the essential need of the bakeries – to make their products from organic ingredients and to exclude chemicals and synthetic ingredients as much as possible. In this way bakeries will have to provide their ingredients from the local farms and agricultural entrepreneurs contributing to the Sustainable Europe 2030 objective which says that “The EU’s farm sector and rural areas are crucial for the well-being of Europeans …Citizens increasingly value food produced with broader benefits for society, such as organic products with geographical indications …. Organic farming, with an emphasis on environmental protection and animal welfare, has been steadily increasing in all EU Member States since 2005 and is expected to keep growing…”
The second European Strategy objective tackled also by our project is improving the digital skills of the participants. This objective corresponds with the “A Digital Agenda for Future” in Europe Strategy 2020 which aims to develop Digital Society and the Sustainable Europe 2030 Strategy contributing to several topics such as: Quality Education – Digital education action plan; Responsible Consumption and Production – by contributing to Large Scale initiatives under Horizon 2020 on digital and sustainable transformation of the AgriFood Sector.
Taking into consideration this European Strategy context all the partners underlined their national situation ( https://www.organic-europe.net): Greece (demand of organic products is increasing, National legislation does not support and the general statistics is bad), Italy (organic agriculture is one of the largest in Europe, but the bakery domain is not aimed by the organic food policies implemented by the authorities), Portugal (a strong need for a national integrated development strategy) Romania organic sector is highly export-oriented. The growing demand for healthy food among more and more customers.
Starting with all this, the idea of this project was born with the following objectives:
1.To improve the skills and competences of bakers in the domain of organic bakery to make them more competitive on the labour market;
2.To develop digital skills of the bakers in order to keep them trained and informed with the help of e-learning platforms
3.To develop partnerships between VET providers and bakeries in order to exchange good practices between bakeries in Europe and through this to foster quality improvement of the services provided by all involved organizations
Target group: bakers, employed in the partner organizations, future employees of the bakeries, the participants of the Baker VET and trainers in the bakery domain. All of them answered questionnaires to identify their needs:
– Producing organic bakery products gave an extra advantage to the bakeries in front of others making them more competitive on the National and European market.
– Bakers needed additional training to be able to produce organic bakery products.
– Bakeries wanted their employees to attend an e-learning course online and use internet resources for their prof development, but this was difficult to realize because their digital skills were underdeveloped in this domain.
The problems which this project tackled are common in most European countries. Transnational approach gave the project wider application of created results, exchange of best practices from involved countries, European input – each country brought organic solutions in the domain of bakery and by comparing already practiced in these countries, the best recipes and solutions were chosen and put in practice during the project activities adding the spirit of belonging to the European community.