Ecole de la Transition Ecologique (ETRE)

In France, every year 100,000 young people leave the school system without a diploma, 56% of them unemployed. At the same time, the green economy develops quickly, creating a need for skilled labour in green and greening jobs. According to ADEME, by 2050 900.000 jobs will have been created in the context of a social-ecological transformation. 

Our school of socio-ecological transition (ETRE) brings together these two dynamics in order to propose an innovative solution to youth looking for vocational orientation and employment opportunities. ETRE proposes different VET courses in green jobs focused on re-engaging and qualifying youth with a difficult educational background (full or partial school dropouts, in situation of handicap…) through environmental practices, experimentation and participation. 

The school thus aims at reducing social inequalities, while simultaneously providing environmental education and the skills necessary for tomorrow’s economy.

In France, every year more than 100,000 young people drop out of the traditional school system (often due to a lack of a purposeful outlet). 56% of them find themselves unemployed. At the same time, an ecological transition will create more than 900,000 jobs according to ADEME.

Even though crucial to respond to the green sectors’ capacity needs, manual work is still a blind spot of national and higher education, thus missing the opportunity to provide a path of excellence to young apprentices, craftsmen, farmers, mechanics… and especially dropouts from the conventional educational system.

How can we build a qualification path for these 100.000 young people, while also providing them with the necessary competences to equip the green economy with skilled workers? This question is at the heart of the active pedagogy of the School of Socio-Ecological Transition (ETRE) in Lahage (31370), where we combine the acquisition of skills through learning by doing with the commitment to ecological citizenship around values of cooperation and respect for life. Since 2017, we have trained more than 160 young people per year in 7 different programs, ranging from 10 days to 12 months.

Founded in Lahage in 2017, the pilot school ETRE has established seven training programmes ranging from 10 days to 2 years organized around 4 axes: 

• Awareness/Discovery;

• Prequalification/Orientation;

• Qualification/Diploma;

• Accompaniment/Incubation.

In the programs, 8 different sectors of activity are addressed, facing either a need to improve environmental performance or a consequence of the ecological transition.

Today, we seek to spread these experimented solutions to new territories. Therefore, we created ETRE Développement, an activity branch working on its diffusion. 

In the last two years, four new schools have been founded in France and an extra five will open in 2021. In order to effectively scale the school’s impact, ETRE Développement is facing the need to organise its network, create national pedagogical content and a replicable model of support for participants. As an incubator, the mandate of ETRE Développement is to spread the national pedagogical model while staying imbedded in local and circular ecosystems.

4 operational branches form ETRE Développment:

• A network animation and shared resources branch;

• An advocacy branch, working with public institutions and companies to create awareness for employment opportunities in green sectors and training;

• A centre for labelling and monitoring;

• A research and innovation pole.

Our educational approach has been nourished by numerous pedagogical experiments proposed to those unable to find their place within traditional programmes. It is crucial to ensure that the target population is able to keep a joyful and engaged posture toward the training project and to help them imagine themselves in a (professional) future.

Our pedagogical objectives are:

• Forming autonomous and responsible young adults, through actively involving them in their training and by employing teaching methods that allow them to understand their professional and social capabilities;

• Removing obstacles to social and professional life, by taking the time to get to know them, supporting them in their general life project, accompanying them on the path out of deadlocks and by guiding them towards help;

• Facilitating orientation towards training or employment, by making them discover new job and training opportunities, showing them that they are capable of training, of respecting rules and by introducing them to companies and training organisations;

• Making them actors of the ecological transition, by creating awareness for environmental issues, allowing them to try out simple and practical solutions on a daily basis, by involving them in actions with a positive impact on the environment and society as a whole. 

The ecological transition has a direct impact on the labour market. It creates new and alters traditional jobs, resulting in new skill requirements in many sectors.

We face the challenge to revaluate manual jobs and training in order to equip the “green” sectors with skilled labour. ETRE schools offer support and qualification programs appropriate to these new needs in the main sectors of activity in transition (waste, energy, agriculture, building). By proposing an appropriate pedagogy for its target population, ETRE is a forerunner of responding to new market needs while also providing an educational safety net to youth in difficulty.

The schools of ecological transition are innovative in many regards. On the one hand, our solution brings two problematic dynamics (increasing school-dropout rate and lack of skills in the green economy) together, thereby turning a double problem into an innovative solution. On the other hand, through our training programs we are working for an improvement of the environmental performance of different production sectors and jobs. It is our aim to integrate reflections on environmental impact into all job types, making our society and labour market truly sustainable.

Contrary to solution competitors, our schools create synergies between all the three dimensions of sustainable development. Many training programs in green jobs are focused on higher education, thereby excluding the most directly impacted and integrating only the most fortunate of us into the dynamics of an ecological transition. It is our aim to integrate everyone, especially those experiencing social inequalities every day and who are traditionally most distanced from ecological questions. Inherently part of our solution is the belief that a successful transition can only be achieved if the ecological and social dimensions are combined, not played off against each other.

Lastly, our training model combines an innovative pedagogy, including especially those who don’t easily find their place in educational models, with a production process. Thus, the young people in training are producing market demands, all while learning about the techniques, mathematics and practice of it at the same time. We are integrating a training programme into a production model.

Our schools of ecological transition are based on low-tech solutions to complex problems. We are supporting low-scale technical solutions, using as little energy as possible and favouring mechanical labour, thus creating jobs. As many technological solutions today are too complicated for non-experts to understand or to repair, we are focusing not only on the environmental impact of the implicated technologies but also on their decentralisation degree. Thus, it is our aim to give everyone the competences to take ownership of our manual production processes, and thereby to become their own “factory”.

At the same time, our innovative modus operandi strongly convergences with an open-source spirit. The cohesion of our network of schools is based on the sharing of our operating mode as well as our pedagogy. In order to give all members the liberty to freely use our new training model, we are using an open-source database, aimed at the exchange of best practices. It also allows for all schools in the network to improve our tools and to diffuse them to those territories where a need for them exists.

Our new formation model has been experimented in different context and has shown that linking green jobs to youth in risk of exclusion works.

Our rate of return to employment or training was of 76%. Thus, even though at strong risk of unemployment, our target population will in eight out of ten cases find their way back into the educational system or the labour market, thanks to our re-engagement measures.

As a school of ecological transition, it is our aim to provide our apprentices with the necessary skills for the labour market and to endow them with an ecological conscience, making them actors of the ecological transition. In June 2020 we realized a quantitative analysis on our participant’s degree of ecological citizenship, finding that 80% of our youth have integrated enough knowledge and active participation through their behaviour, consumption and eco-gestures that they can be considered ecological citizens.  

Furthermore, our training courses are working solely with wood that would otherwise have been thrown away. As a consequence of this circular economy practice, we are recycling 3 tons of wood every month. The same idea applies to our kitchens. For our canteen we have partnerships with local organic supermarkets, allowing us to save 1,5 tons of vegetables from the trash every month while at the same time teaching young people how to cook healthily with them.

A diffusion of our model to new territories would scale not only our training model but also out social and ecological impact.

The ecological crisis goes beyond the environmental consequences of our actions. Indeed, it also has a strong impact on social inequalities, aggravating social divisions and deepening the gap between populations. This is why we are working daily on integrating the social dimension into our environmental engagement.

One aspect of this work includes the re-evaluation of manual jobs as jobs of full worth. The corona crisis could not have been more evident on one point: it is the least well-regarded fringes of professions that keep our societies alive. As Dominique Meda’s work points out, especially so-called “low-skilled” manual and care-jobs have been at the forefront of the crisis, ensuring that we still had access to all essential goods and services.

With the ecological transition, these kinds of jobs will become even more important. To have ecological housing we need workers skilled with using ecological building materials. To have an environmentally friendly agriculture, we need farmers trained in organic agriculture. And to enter into a real circular economy, we need carpenters who know how to reuse furniture or used wood.

Evidently, this is not to mitigate the importance of higher education and the inclusion of sustainability aspects into engineering or architecture. Yet, our schools are a plea to not only concentrate sustainability efforts on these fringes of professions, as we also need workers capable to employ those green technical solutions.

We will face a shortage in manpower executing green solutions, if we don’t face this crisis of devaluation of environmental and manual jobs. Thus, our theory of change is based on two realizations: For the ecological transition to be successful, we need skilled workers employing green solutions on the ground and for the transition to be inclusive, manual jobs play a crucial role, as they allow to integrate those traditionally most distant from ecological concerns into the dynamics of a transition. Training for green jobs is thus not only a necessity if we want to sustain the ecological transition but it is also a proven way to re-engage excluded youth and to reverse the social inequalities currently present in many transition processes.

Today, through our different programs, we are serving 1.000 young people in four different schools. Around 800 are served through awareness raising programs, that we apply in our school, through interventions in companies or public schools as well as through partnerships with other VET centres. 160 young people are specifically trained in green jobs, supplying them with the necessary skills for the greening labour market.

As our scaling process does not only include so-called “scaling out” (diffusion of the model into new territories) but also “scaling up” and broadening the social impact, we are counting to create awareness to 5.000 young adults in 2021. We expect to train 960 young people in green jobs, in 20 different training programmes until next year. With four new schools opening, the official creation of a national network with its headquarter in Paris and the intention to nourish the national debate with our success story, we hope to impact even more than just our target population and to scale our model into a dominant practice.

Until 2025, we plan to develop 30 ETRE schools in France and aim to diffuse our operating model into other European countries. In three years, we will have created one school in every département of the region Occitanie, and in five years there will be at least one school per region. With 30 schools we aim to serve 50.000 young people with sensibilisation programmes, while 10.000 people of our target population will be properly trained in green jobs.  

ETRE Développement is already working on scaling the social impact of our schools through the diffusion of our solution to new territories. However, scaling is not necessarily limited to replication and serving more people of our target population. Our theory of change includes impacting more people, the dominant regime level through changes in norms and legal frameworks and serving our solution more effectively through economies of scale, the exchange of good practices and collective learning processes. Thus, our goals within the next years is to combine efforts in scaling “out” with efforts in scaling “up”.

Within the next year, we are working on the replication of our model to new territories. Four new school openings are already foreseen, additional openings are pursued. On top of that, in 2021 ETRE Développement will be officially created, with a legal status separating this new institution from the initial pilot school. ETRE Développement will have a transformation impact through its different activity branches, including a research and innovation branch and an advocacy branch. At the moment we are experimenting different replication models, on new territories. Some of the new schools are carried by us, through ETRE Développement, others are replicated through a franchise model-inspired network and others still are developing relatively autonomously from ETRE Développement. This experimentation period will help us understand which replication model is the most adapted to our programme and organisation.

In the long run, it is also our goal to diffuse this innovative solution to other European countries. (249)

At the moment, we are mainly facing financial limits in our scaling process. Our financial model is based in part on the selling of our production and on private and public subsidies. As enrolment is free of charge, auto-financing is mainly ensured by our production. However, as the production is inherent part of our training program, it is impossible to us to be as effective as a full woodworking business. Thus, self-financing amounts only to 30% of our financial model. The rest is covered thanks to public and private subsidies.

As scaling out requires a starting capital and enough income to run the new schools, we are putting in question this financing model. We face a strong need to consolidate our business model, shifting from a project-based subsidy approach, to longer term financial help.  

Another difficulty we are currently facing is finding the right model of diffusion. In the last year, we increasingly realized that many of our project carriers are lacking skills and competences to develop the full potential of our schools. Thus, we have been more seriously considering to adopt a centralized development approach. This strategy would allow to ensure that our impact is effectively scaled, our schools all have the same quality, and that the exchange dimension of our network is strong. This diffusion strategy, however, demands a higher amount of human resources for our organisation and increases the financial and social risks we take as the pilot school.

In order to increase the self-financing part of our business model, we our pilot school has become an integration site for long-term unemployed people. Just like the young people, these so called “chantiers d’insertion” are supervised by technical experts and a social support worker. The aim is to create mutual support between the participants in the school and the unemployed in the production process, thus responding a double objective: increasing the productivity of our production and integrating another public into the dynamics of the greening labour market. Furthermore, with more and more schools developing, we will benefit from economies of scale, as collective purchases will become easier and the new schools can benefit from our expertise, thus realizing the same level productivity more quickly. Additionally, we are working on a common selling platform for all ETRE schools.

In order to respond to the financial limits in our diffusion process, we are working on a consolidation of our financial model. Consequently, we are considering multiple ways to become part of long-term financial devices and how to perpetuate our financial partnerships with public and private actors.

The right diffusion model will not be found by extensive theoretical considerations. This is why we are now entering into an experimentation phase, trying out different diffusion strategies. These experimentations will allow us to see whether the most effective way to scaling is a centralized, a franchise-based or a loose affiliation-based diffusion process. An extensive analysis of the different experimentational sites is foreseen to this end.

ETRE Lahage is the pilot school of our ETRE Développement network. As such, ETRE Lahage has the same rights and obligations as the other schools of the network, whereas ETRE Developpement represents the head of the network, leading the diffusion process and accompanying the creation of new schools.

The ETRE Developpement team consists of five people, working full-time on the solution.

• A director of the structure, dealing with representation and exterior relations;

• A network animator, responsible for the accompaniment of new schools, animating exchanges and prospecting potential new project carriers;

• A coordinator, responsible of developing and capitalising our pedagogy, in charge of the labialisation process of new schools;

• A project developer, responsible for research and innovation;

• An advocacy responsible, working on the advocacy plan and its application as well as communication aspects toward different publics.

Committed and determined, our ETRE Développement team is perfectly suited to achieve our objectives and deliver the solution to as many territories as possible. We rely on the specific skills of each person to successfully develop our activities. Our strong team cohesion, shared values as well as our perfectly balanced and complementary level of knowledge and skills are the basis of the success and development of this operation. Coming from different backgrounds, each one of us has enriched the team with their specific knowledge. Through a personal interpretation of our common mission in light of our respective specific skills, we have each made our mission our own. 

It is also thanks to this group dynamic, that we have been laureate 2019 of the foundation “La France s’engage” for the development and diffusion of our schools of ecological transition. This recognition generated a greater visibility to our project, coupled with high expectations concerning the results; additional motivational factor to implement our solution for the whole team.

We have a very extensive network of partner organisation, with 3 types of partnerships with the school: 

Financial partnerships both with public and private actors. Public partners are for example the European Union, the regional government of Occitanie, the département Haute Haronne, Toulouse Métropole, and our communauté de communes Coeur de Garonne. Private partners are among others: The “Fondation pour la Nature et l’Homme”, founded by Nicolas Hulot, the Foundation “La France s’engage” founded by the president of the republic Francois Hollande, the foundation of BNP Pariba and the “Fondation de France”. 

We also have strong partnerships with educational actors and prescribers of participants, such as the national education ministry, the ministry for the ecological and energetic transition, Pôle emploi (french employment centre), the Missions locales (Portal for the professional integration of young people) as well as the PJJ (public organ charged of the legal protection of young people). 

Finally, we have a broad network of partnerships with companies, associations and NGO working in the social and solidarity economy. In this field we work closely with over 100 partner-companies or associations.