Future Skills & Sustainable Development in the Green Salon Central in this project is the fact that the project tries to transfer the ideas and knowledge on sustainability through information, education and training to students,schools,employers,employees and other stakeholders in the Hair and Beauty (H&B) sector. This project aims at providing insight into sustainability. Focus: Health&Safety, environment, materials/resources, energy&water, equipment, customer experience and management (entrepreneur skills). Context The hairdressing sector in Europe employs more than one million people across 400.000 hairdressing salons, receiving 350 million potential customers. Hairdressing services, together with beauty treatment - the H&B sector as it’s called, form the personal services sector. Over the last years the sector has gone through a great deal of changes. The H&B often has more affinity with knowledge about their profession than with other aspects of the business. Attention to labour, health&safety, environment, marketing, service and services are crucial for successful entrepreneurship. A lot of these aspects can be shared under the label: Sustainability & entrepreneur skills. Goals, results and impact The aim of this project is to develop innovative ways of learning about sustainability and to promote sustainability in schools and companies in the sector. We will combine the sustainable ideas through education and training with innovative ideas within the sector. The educational products we want to generate during the process will include workshops on sustainability and innovation, teaching materials for schools and extracurricular education about sustainability in the 'green' salon (3 learning modules), a study of management systems of sustainability in the sector in Europe, develop a diagnostic scan for businesses and schools, a roadmap for introducing sustainability in the salon, a physical sustainability game for the sector, an Internet awareness game about sustainability and entrepreneurial skills, a final sector conference and student participation, with the aim of developing a magazine on sustainability in the H&B sector and a demo of sustainable hair creations. We also communicate on the results of the entire project through a brochure, articles and press releases, a project website and the final conference in Amsterdam. By informing students, teachers and policy makers, we want to take steps towards more sustainability. Vocational education is in close contact with the companies in the local community and can open doors to changes in the industry. Therefore, activities will be organized with students, workers and employers in the partner countries. Several classes with students and teachers are actively involved in the activities in each country. Through this project we want to demonstrate that -in Europe- we need to act sustainably in the sector in a striking way. What and how In the project we gather facts through research on management systems, the desired situation in a sustainable salon (core of a simple certification system), competences needed to reach this situation and research on a diagnostic scan to map the current situation on sustainability in a school or salon. The outcomes of the research we will discuss with experts and the results are input for developing the scan, the internet awareness game, the learning material in 3 modules and a final sector conference with student participation along the project. Using the competences of the different partners, their network, the experts, entrepreneurs in the sector and the teachers and students in the conferences and at home in the schools, we combine knowledge and perseverance to finalize the task in a good way. Long term The effect of working sustainable in a ‘Green salon’ bottom line, is reducing risks and having more pleasure and satisfaction on the work spot. Sustainability creates less problems with health & safety, less environmental damage, less waste and a better and healthier use of materials and resources, a more controlled use of energy and water, more sustainable choices in investing in equipment and a higher level of customer experience and employee satisfaction. This all has to be managed by an entrepreneur or self-employed H&B specialist with the right skills. In this way the company can be more profitable and more competitive. This requires good and to the point education and training in regular VET and non-formal education accessible to people who are already working in the sector. Partners ES-El Palo – Malaga, VET school: Hair & Beauty DK-Aarhus Tech, VET school: hairdressing department FR-IGS Lyon, VET & HE school: experienced in development of ICT games and entrepreneurial tools UK- Bridgewater College, VET school: hairdressing department NL- ROC Amsterdam, VET school: hairdressing department NL-Stivako – Commercial VET school entrepreneurial skills and sustainability & CSR in the creative industries