FAS is an upper-secondary school with about 240 students. The school is located on the south-east coast of Iceland, in the fishing village Höfn in Hornafjörður that has a population close to1800. Höfn is about 450 km away from the capital, Reykjavík. The village is geographically rather isolated, the next urban area to the east (Djúpivogur) is 100 km away and the closest one to the west (Kirkjubæjarklaustur) is 200 km away. The municipality of Hornafjörður reaches over a long and narrow habitable line between the Atlantic Ocean in the south and the unhabitable mountains and the greatest glacier in Europe, Vatnajökull glacier, in the north. A big part of the municipality of Hornafjörður is within the National Park, Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður, one of the largest national parks in Europe. The National Park is about 12.000 square km. which is about12% of the total area of the country. The main industry in the town is fishing, fish processing and tourism that has been growing substantially the last years.
FAS is situated in the multi-purpose building of Nýheimar that also houses one of The University of Iceland's Research Centres, (The Hornafjordur Regional Research Centre (HRRC)), a Consultancy for Entrepreneurs, the Southeast Iceland Nature Research Centre, a Cultural Centre and facilities for online learning. The school is in good connection with these institutions through divers’ cooperation. The main purpose of the school is to serve the community where it is located, both young students, entrepreneurs, businesses and economic life. FAS is in collaboration with other rural upper-secondary schools in Iceland and the main aim of their collaboration is to promote good and varied studies in all the schools. The course offering in FAS is partly based on the needs of the community, e.g., mountaineering instructor training and courses for sea- engineers. FAS is also in a progressive collaboration with an art and craft centre called Vöruhúsið with the goal to strengthen the creative part of entrepreneurship and innovation in the society. The last years FAS has placed emphasis on man's connection to nature, health, and wellness. Students can participate in performance sport courses, yoga- and mindfulness courses and in various field trips, e.g. glaciers measurements, bird counting and researching progressing of vegetation. The school meets students with special needs in the best possible way it can and most of the students that graduate from FAS plan on further studies and higher education.
Mood of Finland company's mission is to act for a better future in a Creative, Inspiring and Regenerative way, together with others and in a good mood. Acting for a better future means increasing responsible and regenerative awareness in tourism companies and among travelers by offering educational services and experiences based on nature, such as forest walk and tree planting events.
Anu Nylund is the founder and owner of the company and participates in the Forestwell project. Anu has a master´s degree in Social Sciences, in Tourism Research from the University of Lapland. Anu is a professional in the tourism industry with a working experience in diverse tourism jobs for over 25 years in Finland and in Spain and specializes in responsible business and regenerative tourism.
Love Forest Finland is a concept owned by Mood of Finland company. Trees are planted as a symbol of love and care for the desired person or object, and a certificate is purchased for the planting, on which the story of the tree is written. Trees can be planted in any licensed location all over the world and the forest owner is responsible for the tree care. Love Forest Finland concept raises funds for nature protection, offers an option to influence and participate in actions to reduce climate change and to support biodiversity preservation. (Love Forest Finland – concept)
Website: https://moodoffinland.fi/en/home/
VCHT Maribor is a 2-year vocational college, offering associate degree education at tertiary level. We offer 2 study programmes: (1) Hospitality and Tourism, and (2) Wellness. VCHT is a public vocational college, located in the 2nd largest town in Slovenia (Maribor, population 100,000). VCHT offers full-time and part-time study programmes and currently has about 300 active students with 20 full-time staff and 30 external teaching associates. We are also very active in the field of informal education and training through our B2B center called MIC (organising activities, events, training programmes and workshops for the industry). Majority of students are age-group 19+. VCHT collaborates internationally via different activities ranging from mobility (we received multiple recognitions from national agency for mobility for excellence), international events, competitions, conferences, excursions and projects. CHT is an open, modern and European-oriented school, striving towards international recognitions/awards, associations (AEHT, EUHRODIP, GEORGE BAPTISTE), and is well known internationally. We strive towards innovative and high quality teaching standards and are proud on our students high employment rate, visible positions of the students in the tourisma nd wellness industry and active Alumni club.
VCHT has 250 students, 20 full-time staff and 30 external teachers. Close relationships and cooperation with the tourism industry (local and global) are their core values. VCHT has an organisational unit called MIC. The B2B Centre MIC – Academy of Culinary Arts and Tourism is a separate organisational unit of VCHT (VCHT was one of the first educational institutions in Slovenia that branched out its reach as an industry partner) that connects and stimulates tourism, catering and wellness companies with educational activities. Through the B2B centre, VCHT actively cooperates and engage with the wellness and tourism industries. Businesses transfer their practical knowledge and competencies to VCHT to inform their educational processes, while VCHT transferring innovative academic knowledge, and new best practice skills and competences to the companies. Blended learning is a key delivery tool in this process which has been seen to greatly enhance competencies in catering, tourism and wellness locally. In 2010, VCHT established an International Institute for Wellness Development. Its main purpose is to develop scientific research and explore the economic activity that wellness provides. The Institute and VCHT are particularly interested in the potential of wellness with regard to Slovenian tourist development which makes them an ideal leader of FORESTWELL project.
The VCHT Wellness Institute cooperates with similar international organisations for wellness activity development and has a long-term partnership with the European Wellness Institute EWI from Germany. Working with their international partners, the Wellness Institute keeps up to date on current trends in the wellness industry and encourages the implementation of industry-specific knowledge and the development of new related competencies. The Institute organises regular panel discussions for professional debates, supports and develops research and presents these at scientific and professional conferences. VCHT through their Wellness Institute and B2B Centre promotes, enhances and strengthens the knowledge, skills and competencies of current and future tourism and wellbeing employees by providing in service training in: healthy and wellbeing, wellness tourism and customer service development.
Since 2003, Momentum (MMS) has worked in developing progressive learning programmes and platforms for education with a special focus on the tourism innovations that transformational impact on local communities and rural economies. MMS combines an intimate knowledge of the Irish tourism landscape with their VET specialisms of blended learning and professional development training in entrepreneurship, digitisation as a tool in rural economy regeneration, and community stimulus training incorporating new approaches to enabling a greener and smarter recovery post Covid-19. MMS’s expertise as a tourism VET provider and destination development advisor has been valued by national organisations in Ireland including Fáilte Ireland (Ireland’s tourism development agency), ILDN (the national network of rural development LEADER companies), at the regional level by Local Authorities (where they have assisted in niche tourism), Local Enterprise Offices and Skillnet training networks. MMS has a wealth of tourism and education talent and has grown rapidly in size to employ 24 staff and subcontractors. MMS equips over 600 learners per annum through classroom training and thousands of others through their sought-after classroom training courses and thousands of others through their blended learning and online courses including webinars and eLearning environments. MMS's quality system is learner-centric and based on the standards and procedures promoted by Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), the official accreditation board in Ireland for VET and Adult Education.
As well as course curriculum and content development and delivering training, MMS also has a strong marketing division specialising in brand development, multimedia content generation, communication strategies and social media. With a strong network base across Ireland, MMS have excellent dissemination potential and the ability to draw high profile attention to VR Forests. MMS is an experienced EU project partner and advocate of lifelong learning. Their expertise spans: needs assessments, undertaking targeted research and policy analysis, materials origination and adaptations, transfer of course curricula and digital strategies to deliver high impact learning outcomes. Momentum’s work is recognized as European best practice – in 2016, it won a European Enterprise Promotion Award for its work on www.restart.how a training programme for those who failed in business with the potential and ambition to restart. MMS is a member and contributor to Tourism From Zero, tourismfromzero.org, a new movement to provide a one-stop-shop for problems and solutions surrounding travel, tourism, wellbeing, recreation, adventure, outdoor space utilisation including forests.
