Friday 8 April 2011

Partnership Meeting II (London)



The place of the 2nd meeting – London – welcomed us with a nice weather and closed Platform No.4 on the Gatwick Railway station. Our “travel instructions” start to be wasted and we have to improvising. Fortunately, thanks to very well organized London traffic we found right way to hotel without great problems. Project meeting shows that situation in the education systems in partners countries are too different and I wonder how result of this project will appear. Thank to Embrace guys for nice stay in London and see all in Portugal ☺

Zuzana

First off all I like London. The meetings and technical tours were effective for our team and also for me. Bedzed was good demonstration for renewable energies but maybe they need little maintains. Bottom line it was good experience for me and I appreciate for every thing to Dirk for every thing.

Bedzed

Gyuner Ahmed

Second meeting of the project, but my first participating in. And also my first visit to London and it was exciting. So the project meetings and the visits to North West London College and BedZed are very effective times for me. I think the project will be succesfull if the tasks will do each team. And thanks for Embrace hospitality and also Dirk.

Firat

Our trip has started with Visa struggling, finally having UK visa, we felt very happy ☺, it was really astonishing that we get the visas at the last day before our trip.
We arrived London on Saturday, since we don’t know London underground very well, it was very difficult for us to transport with our colleague who has wheelchair.
It seems London has a lot to improve on for disabled people. At first day, country presentations took place, we saw that all the partners are ready to fill up their country reports. After presentations, North West College visit was also very interesting, since our school is also vocational college, we had opportunity to compare education environment, workshops, equipments. We found school very well structured, but not so much interesting regarding renewable trainings. Second day, Mr. Graham’s presentation was also interesting, but it seems UK also needs much efforts to adapt NVQ to EQF. For us, being at the start seemed less complicated ☺
Third day, we worked on report structure, our partners from Portugal and Slovakia found Turkish team more ambitious than the project required ☺ But, at the last, I think we reached common agreement about the structure.
Coming to Bedzed, it is the first time I have seen such facility with almost zero carbon emission. I hope one day most of the buildings turns in to that way. Probably, it will be must. Finally, thanks to Dirk and Fergal for their hospitable welcome.

Baris Ozcelik

The most attractive parts of this visitation were BedZED and Graham’s presentation about the existing vocational training status on renewables in UK. Although I sometimes lose my motivation, I am glad to be a member of RenewVET. I am willing to see the successful outputs of the project.


Mete Çubukçu

I admire BedZED. On the other hand I enjoyed London, specially the parks.

Yildirim Özkaya

For us that are “beginners” in these kind of things (international projects and renewable energies) everything we can learn is rewarding. A special thanks to Dirk and Fergal of EMBRACE CORPORATION for the hospitality and a word of thanks to Barish Ozcelik for the initiative. Thanks for all for the kindness. See you in Penela in October.

Guilherme Vieira


The 2nd partnership meeting was prepared for the last weeks (since March 2011) by supporting Turkish participants with their visa support letters, arranging the accommodation, assessing best transport options (to the office/ meeting place, going into town etc). We then prepared the programme and send it for review to everybody. It was important for us that the programme was suitable within the project but also allows for flexibility if the group would like changes to be made. We picked up the participants from their hotel, 20min by bus from the meeting place in Brixton, South London. We have one person in a wheelchair and this meant to analyse the transportation carefully. It is easier to go around by bus, more difficult to use the underground or British Rail because there are not many stations that have disabled access, or that had working lifts. For me it was the first time I travelled with someone in a wheelchair and it was shocking how difficult it can be to get around town without support. How much can wheelchair users in London enjoy what the city has to offer?

Dirk Bischof

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