On January 31, 2020 a first meeting on the new project “SDG 8 – Promoting decent work and productive employment through Higher Education” took place in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Under the lead of Johannes Siegrist, Senior Professor at University Düsseldorf and Nuria Mancebo, Director of the Chair of Health and Safety of the University of Girona, Spain, Chair of the ENETOSH Task Force Higher Education, this project has been started to strengthen decent work and productive employment through improved and coordinated education and training programs on health and safety in Higher Education at national, European and international level. The project was initiated by Lennart Levi, Emeritus Professor of Psychosocial Medicine, Member of the Swedish Parliament 2006-2010; Eurostress HB, Sweden. The official kick-off event will be announced soon.

Uruguay is one of the participating countries of the global Project “Building a Generation of Safe and Healthy Workers. Safe Youth @ work”, executed by the ILO and funded by the US Department of Labor. One of the components of the Project aims at strengthening the mainstreaming of occupational safety and health into vocational training.
The inclusion of OSH training into VT training programmes is commonplace. All the actors involved in training and work agree that it is in training processes where we should acquire knowledge, develop skills and internalize risk identification and prevention behaviours at work.
For participants in training processes, in particular young people, to effectively adopt safe and healthy work behaviours, they must understand and value their importance, associate them and apply them in the different processes and moments of their work practice, know their rights and duties in this field and, most of all, identify and act to prevent the specific risks to which they are exposed to by developing OSH skills.
The objective of this booklet is to offer some practical guidelines to teachers to make their work in the field of OSH easier.
The guidelines and suggestions that are here systematized aim at mainstreaming the prevention of risks at work, the protection and the promotion of health into the forestry and wood production sector, while also taking into account the particular features of the target audience: young people who are participating in educational processes.
These guidelines include: Identification of skills to be developed by participants, Methodological suggestions for mainstreaming, Analysis of work processes by identifying risks, common errors and systematizing good practices, Examples of learning activities linked to different risks and a repository of resources to support training processes.
The guide can be downloaded on the ILO website.

The global Project “Building a Generation of Safe and Healthy Workers -- Safe Youth@Work Project”, executed by the ILO and funded by the US Department of Labor, pursues among its main components: mainstreaming OSH in vocational training programmes, awareness raising of vulnerability of young workers and enhancing the technical capacities of labour inspectors to better identify the occupational risks faced by youth at work.
In this framework, ILO/Cinterfor (Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training) is responsible for implementing the Project component related to OSH in vocational training in Uruguay and as a learning outcome of the implementation of the Project in the country, this guide was defined with the purpose of being a valuable tool for the entire region. Based on an applied experience, the impact of the Project is regionalized through a tool that is available to other countries.
The purpose of this Guide is that the different actors involved in training processes (curriculum designers, leaders at educational centres, teachers or facilitators, in-company tutors, etc.) can find tools and practical suggestions that may enable the application of OSH principles and practices at all times. The guidelines and suggestions that are here systematized aim at approaching the prevention of risks at work, the protection and the promotion of health in different areas in a cross-cutting manner, while also taking into account the particular features of the target audience: young people who are participating in educational processes of different kinds.
The guide can be downloaded from the "Skills for Employment" website of ILO.

The International Year of Sound 2020 (IYS) is a global initiative to highlight the importance of sound and related sciences and technologies for all in society. The International Year of Sound will consist of coordinated activities on regional, national and international levels. These activities will aim to stimulate the understanding throughout the world of the important role that sound plays in all aspects of our society. As well, these activities will also encourage an understanding of the need for the control of noise in nature, in the built environment, and in the workplace.
In the scope of the International Year of Sound, an International Competition for students of Primary, Middle and Secondary Schools from all over the world has been announced.
The competition is structured in two categories:
1. Competition for students of Primary and Middle Schools (approximately from 5 to 12 years old); Students are asked to produce hand-made drawings, pictures, patchworks, collages and similar, related to their world of sounds, inspired by the the motto of IYS2020 “Importance of Sound for Society and the World” and, possibly, by melody and refrain of the song “We are the sounds of our world”.
2. Competition for students of Secondary Schools (approximately from 13 to 18 years old); Students are asked to write a stanza of 4 verses in mother tongue and/or in English, inspired by the melody and the refrain of the song “We are the sounds of our world” as well as by the motto of IYS2020 “Importance of Sound for Society and the World”.
Participants can be students: as individual or organized in groups and whole classes, considered as representatives of their school.
Deadline is 30 April 2020, Winners and awarded items will be announced by ICA (International Commission for Acoustics) by 31 August 2020.
You can find the competition details in this document (PDF) or on the IYS website.