Vinculando el Agro-aprendizaje para un Mundo Sostenible The school leaders and teachers of the secondary technical schools that offer Agricultural Production provide effective, gender-responsive agriculture and entrepreneurship education. The Vinculando el Agro-aprendizaje para un Mundo Sostenible (¡VAMOS!) programme constitutes VVOB’s commitment to the realisation of Target 4.4. of SDG4 and Goal 5 of the Ecuador Joint Strategic Framework (JSF). Indirectly, the programme also contributes to the achievement of JSF Goal 3.

More specifically, ¡VAMOS! aims to improve the quality of agriculture and entrepreneurship teaching – and, hence, learning – in Ecuador’s secondary schools (bachillerato-level) that offer the field of study ‘Agricultural Production’. The programme introduces a model of effective, gender-responsive agriculture and entrepreneurship education that combines study and career guidance, project-based learning for agripreneurship, and work-based learning and that links schools to the agriculture world of work for the delivery of these three components.

Over the course of the programme, 528 in-service teachers and 144 in-service school leaders in the provinces of Bolívar, Esmeraldas, Los Ríos, Manabí and Pastaza will be equipped with the competences to do so, reaching 8,311 general secondary students and 11,641 students in secondary technical education. Thanks to ¡VAMOS!, they will benefit from quality continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities provided by the Ministry of Education’s pedagogical counseling services (asesoría educativa) and three universities – the Pontifica Universidad Católica Sede Esmeraldas, Universidad Nacional de Educación and the Universidad Técnica de Manabí.

While the programme focuses on strengthening the capacity of these selected CPD providers, VVOB also supports the Ministry of Education and its strategic partners from the  agriculture world of work to foster collaboration, dialogue and adaptive learning aimed at designing a nation-wide scaling strategy. This strategy will be informed by evidence about the in-service professional development programmes offered by the asesoría and the universities. VVOB will directly build the capacity of MINEDUC's pedagogical counsellors (37) and of lecturers and other key personnel (30) from the three selected partner-universities. These teams (VVOB's target groups) will provide continuous professional development to 144 school leaders and 528 Agriculture and Entrepreneurship  teachers (VVOB's beneficiaries).  VVOB will also directly support 15 MINEDUC staff in the formulation of a scaling strategy.