108 109 Award is a highlight of school life at the VBS Akademiestraße. Numerous prominent personalities have already taken part in the AMICUS Award as jurors or laudators. For the students, being nominated for the AMICUS Award is a great honour and above all shows the dedication and commitment with which students work for social, societal, and ecological causes. Openness towards all religions and world views is vital, which is why projects are carried out across all religions. Award ceremony at the 20th Amicus Award at Vienna Business School Akademiestraße Image © Harald Klemm The Sustainable Development Goals play an important role in lesson planning: In the 2023/24 school year, we are setting a new focus: each month, the focus will be on a specific SDG, which will be covered in class as far as the syllabus allows. All teachers, regardless of their subject, are invited to contribute with a more or less extensive activity in class. As part of Entrepreneurship Education, our 2nd and 3rd year students at the commercial academy take part in programmes such as "Changemaker" and "Entrepreneurship Week": the students develop sustainable business ideas and are coached in their role as "social entrepreneurs" by real start-up founders. The VBS Akademiestraße has made a significant contribution to the PILGRIM MitWelt Expert Passport for the upper level. The programme for the upper level was developed in cooperation with the Centre “Education for Sustainable Development & Spirituality” at the KPH Vienna/Krems and the BG/BRG Purkersdorf. The students deal with selected topics related to the SDGs, complete tasks on them and enter them in the Mit-Welt Expert Passport. The aim is to promote mindfulness in thinking. The initiative takes on an even greater dimension when students pass on their knowledge to peers and train them to become Mit-Welt experts, as was recently done in an exchange with a school in Latvia. A sustainable world can only be created across national borders. At teacher level, there is a need to develop further training programmes in the area of sustainability. Teachers from the VBS Akademiestraße are participating in the Erasmus+ project "SYSMIND". They are developing teaching materials to better prepare students for future challenges in the workplace. What kind of sustainable events are held at the school? At the end of every school year, during the so-called Environmental Days, all classes tackle a self-chosen environmental topic (in a wider sense) and document their results and findings on various media. The "Future Day 2024" took place for the first time this year. Following a keynote speech on the topic of "Circular economy, entrepreneurship & digitalisation - innovation for a sustainable future", workshops were held in cooperation with non-profit organisations on the following topics: "Gender equality" (SDG 5), "Prejudice, anti-discrimination and civil courage" (SDG 16), "Poverty in Austria" (SDG 1) and "Human rights in general" (SDG 16). The pilgrimage into the future will take a long time. But one thing is certain: young people have already set out to shape a new world. At the VBS Akademiestraße, we see it as our responsibility to accompany our students part of the way and to provide them with a future-oriented education that equips them with the skills they need for their life. MMag. Evelyn Meyer, MSc Principal, Vienna Business School Akademiestraße
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