About Us
Green guidance is a development of career guidance in which people are supported to make their education, training and employment choices with an awareness of and concern about the climate crisis and other environmental issues. Green guidance is not just about directing workers into a small sub-set of ‘sustainable’ industries, although it definitely addresses this, rather it is about helping people to understand the environmental impacts of their working lives and develop more positive and sustainable ways forward.
This project is designed to meet the following objectives:
- Developing the concept of green guidance and exploring its practical implications by pooling knowledge and experience from across a range of countries.
- Providing career guidance practitioners and VET staff with an approach that they can use to develop their learners and clients’ capacity to understand and respond to climate change in their education and employment choices.
- Supporting practice in green guidance with a handbook, audit tool and resources.
Green guidance is a concept that has been used extensively to discuss the career guidance field’s response to the climate crisis. However, it has largely remained as an academic debating point and has, so far, not been able to influence practice in the field very much. There are several important links between career guidance and green transition, that remain insufficiently exploited in practice:
- Career guidance can help people identify new opportunities for VET and career development in the green economy, such as green jobs that directly contribute to environmental protection or improvement, or jobs that are indirectly affected by environmental regulations or consumer preferences.
- Career guidance can help people identify VET opportunities that allow them to acquire the skills and competencies needed for the green transition, such as technical skills in renewable energy or circular economy.
- Career guidance can help people cope with the risks and challenges of the green transition, such as job losses or displacement in carbon-intensive sectors, skill mismatches or gaps, and climate anxiety.
- Career guidance can help people participate in the social dialogue and policy-making processes related to the green transition, such as advocating for a just transition that leaves no one behind.
This project innovates by taking an academic concept and using a process of research, practice sharing and development to create a model for practice and tools to support this model. The needs analysis shows that there is a considerable lack of tools, methods and resources for teachers and practitioners.
Green guidance also has the potential to promote green growth and stimulate ecological innovation by promoting career choices that can help reduce environmental impacts and enhance resource efficiency and can generate economic value and social benefits by creating new markets, business opportunities and jobs linked to the green transition.
These objectives will guide the creation of useful outputs for career practitioners in education and employment sector.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or SAAIC. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.