🌍 A project that puts students at the centre of the food industry
For 18 months, a European consortium coordinated by CIFP Don Bosco LHII (Errenteria, Basque Country) worked to answer a question as simple as it is urgent: how do we train the next generation of food-industry professionals so that they can take on real challenges, in real companies, with real criteria?
The answer has a Basque name: ETHAZI — Euskal Erronketan Oinarritutako Ikaskuntza, or in English, Collaborative Challenge-Based Learning. A methodology developed by Tknika (the Basque Centre for Research and Applied Innovation in Vocational Training) which, within the ETHAZI4FOOD project, has been adapted to the agri-food sector together with partners from Italy, Turkey and the Basque Country.
Today we are pleased to announce that all the project's results are publicly available on the CIFP Don Bosco website. Here is what you will find — and why we think it is worth downloading, using and sharing.
💡 Four Challenges, a methodology and a commitment to inclusive learning
ETHAZI4FOOD does not produce theory: it produces tools ready to use in the classroom. The consortium has designed, validated and published a complete package of training resources for VET teachers and food-sector trainers:
🎬 Six training videos to understand the methodology in minutes
Before adopting a methodology, you have to see it in action. That is why six short audiovisual capsules have been produced in English: an introduction to the ETHAZI methodology and its collaborative philosophy; a visual guide to the ETHAZI Challenge template — how a challenge is designed from scratch; and four videos, one for each Challenge developed, showing how the model is applied in real food-sector scenarios.
🧩 The 4 Learning Challenges
Each Challenge is available as a downloadable PDF and includes pedagogical objectives, didactic sequences, trainer resources and assessment proposals:
Challenge 1 — Organic and Local Food. A journey through the production of jams and preserves using organic, locally sourced raw materials. It integrates processes, environmental quality, laboratory work and a final product with real labelling. Accompanied by a Roadmap that the trainer can follow step by step.
Challenge 2 — Odoo in the Food Industry. A practical immersion in the business management of a food SME using Odoo ERP: marketing, logistics, integrated processes, quality and environmental management. It connects pedagogy with the digital reality of the sector.
Challenge 3 — Circular Economy and Project Management: Brewer's grains, a world of alternatives. A challenge based on a real by-product of the brewing industry — brewer's spent grain — that asks students to transform it into functional foods with a longer shelf life. Includes a Flow Chart that orders the stages of the process.
Challenge 4 — Internationalization and New Markets. A Challenge focused on opening international markets for European agri-food products, with emphasis on strategy, regulation, marketing and international logistics. Complemented by a Basic Curriculum Design document that facilitates the integration of the challenge into any VET curricular programme.
♿ Inclusive and equitable learning: diversity as a driver
Designing challenges is not enough. We have to make sure that all students — regardless of their gender, origin, ability or background — can fully participate. That is why the consortium has published a specific guide: Inclusive and Equitable Learning for Diversity — Guidelines for Ethazi Challenges.
The document offers concrete guidelines for trainers to adapt each Challenge to diverse classrooms, paying special attention to young people at risk of exclusion, migrant women, and profiles that have traditionally had less access to industrial VET. For ABARKA, this guide is one of the most valuable products of the project: inclusion is not stuck on as a label at the end — it is designed from the start.
🤝 A consortium that proves Europe works when built from the bottom up
ETHAZI4FOOD has been possible thanks to a consortium that combines technical coordination, pedagogical experience, territorial anchoring and an international vocation:
CIFP Don Bosco LHII (Errenteria, Basque Country) — project coordinator and driver of curricular adaptation.
ABARKA ONGD (Oiartzun, Basque Country) — partner responsible for consortium coordination, international dissemination, social inclusion and trainer training in European projects.
CIOFS-FP Puglia (Italy) — host partner of the Training of Trainers in Taranto and of the workshops in Ruvo di Puglia and Taranto.
Cooperativa ZEMBUL (Tunceli, Turkey) — partner responsible for the Turkish perspective in the Cutting-Edge Review and for opening the project to the Anatolian food sector.
CIFP Plaiaundi (Irun) and Tknika (Basque VET Research Centre) — local associated entities, guarantors of methodological coherence with the original ETHAZI model.
During the project, a sectoral Cutting-Edge Review was developed with surveys and interviews in Spain, Italy and Turkey; an intensive Training of Trainers (TTT) was held in Taranto; seven field-practice workshops took place with students and companies between May and October 2025; an international JUMPIN Seminar was held in December 2025; and a final report will soon be published on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform.
🚀 Your turn: download, use and share
All material produced by the consortium is freely and openly available in the section dedicated to the project on the CIFP Don Bosco website. If you are a VET trainer, a coordinator of an educational centre, a food-sector professional, a member of an NGO working with young people, or simply someone who believes — as we do — that vocational training can be a powerful lever for social and economic transformation… these resources are for you.
👉 Access all ETHAZI4FOOD results here: https://www.donbosco.eus/additional-information-2/ — there you will find the six training videos, the four Challenges in PDF, the trainer roadmaps and flow charts, the basic curriculum design, and the inclusive learning guide. Everything downloadable, everything reusable, everything designed to reach the classroom.
At ABARKA, the legacy phase of the project continues: a community of practice is being built with the trainers trained in the TTT, the methodology is being transferred to other sectors (tourism, agriculture, health), and a KA220-VET continuity proposal is being prepared for 2026–2027 to broaden the consortium and deepen the impact. If your organisation would like to join, get in touch.
Because, in the end, the best way to honour a European project is to make sure it does not end when the final report is closed.
📌 Project data
Title: ETHAZI4FOOD — ETHAZI methodology applied to Food Industry VET.
Reference: 2024-1-ES01-KA210-VET-000247832.
Programme: Erasmus+ KA210-VET · Small-Scale Partnerships.
Agency: SEPIE (Spain).
Duration: December 2024 – 2026.
ABARKA contact: Clotaire · [email protected].
Co-financed by the European Union · Funded by the European Union. The views expressed are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the National Agency (SEPIE).