The consortium meeting “Waste Management and Circular Economy, Waste Treatment & Valorization Technologies” was held by the NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal (NOVA School of Science and Technology) from the 9th to 13th January, 2023, as part of the project “Techno-Economic-Societal Sustainable Development Training in Sri Lanka” (TESS). The meeting was attended by four universities from the programme countries (USN-Norway, DTU – Denmark, NOVA – Portugal, and Essex – UK) and five Sri Lankan partner universities (University of Jaffna, Moratuwa, Ruhuna, Sri Jayewardenepura and Vocational Technology) with Janathakshan GTE Ltd. Along with other representatives from the five universities in Sri Lanka, Ms. Gothami Chandraratne, Director – Operations of Janathakshan took part in the meeting.
There were productive discussions on the project progress, while future interventions were also identified. For the groups from Sri Lanka, it was an exciting event with a great opportunity to share expertise, knowledge, and experiences about the higher education and its efforts to develop a resilient nation. The USN – Norway is the project’s primary coordinator and all the other European partners too shared their expertise and experiences in terms of training, skill development and knowledge dissemination.TESS project is an innovative partnership which is instrumental in developing the higher education sector in Sri Lanka and familiarize and introduce technologies on waste management to Sri Lanka counterparts.
The focus of the project is to bring innovation to waste management education in Sri Lanka by identifying the need to introduce new courses at Bachelor and Master level as well as redesigning the existing curricular in the higher education
institutes. By developing new interdisciplinary programmes and redesigning existing programmes, the Sri Lankan Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) will offer up-to-date, student-centred programmes with increased focus on employability.
The project has been instrumental in establishing and revamping courses, arranging training workshops for teachers, digital learning, giving close attention to increased recruitment of female students, establishing cooperation with industry, promoting inclusion of local municipalities as associated partners and intensive dissemination information-related activities.
Janathakshan has been working with 5 Sri Lankan Universities and 4 European Universities in this project providing its expertise in working with government and private actors in the waste management sector thus bringing in a vital aspect of industrial relations to the development of the Higher Education sector in Sri Lanka. The Project is funded by the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education (European Union scholarship programme) in partnership with University of South Eastern Norway. TESS website link: http://techcsk.com/tess/