Identifying the Training Content Needs in Vocational Education & Training Projects: The Organic.Balkanet Case V.E. Protonotarios 1 , N. Palavitsinis 1 , K. Papakonstantinou 1 , M. Toader 2 , G. V. Roman 2 1 Greek Research & Technology Network (GRNET), Mesogeion 56, 115 27Athens, Greece 2 University of Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine (USAMV) Bucharest, Bulevardul MARASTI nr. 59, Bucuresti, 011464 Romania vprot@aua.gr Abstract Organic.Balkanet is an LdV EU project which started in December 2009, aiming at the development of the skills of Organic Agriculture trainers in Balkan countries. For this purpose, the project identified the training needs in each of the participating countries and intends to develop a basic training curriculum as well as specialized curricula focusing on the specific needs of each of the participating countries. In this context, an analysis of the existing training content, including the contributed by the project partners and the publicly available, was performed and the results of this analysis are presented in this short paper. Keywords: VET, content, organic agriculture, training Introduction Organic.Balkanet (http://www.organic-balkanet.eu ) is a 24-month EU project which started in December 2009, partially funded by the Leonardo da Vinci programme. It aims to “develop the skills of Organic Agriculture (OA) trainers for the Balkans”. The project consortium consists of seven project partners coming from five countries (Romania, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece and Spain, as the technical partner of the consortium). The representation of these countries in the project aims to facilitate the implementation and transfer of innovation, good practices and expertise among them. Despite the importance and rapid growth of OA in Europe, both in academic and professional level, in Balkan countries the uptake of OA practices and techniques is still developing (data taken from www.organic-europe.net). Among others, the reasons for these countries lagging behind can be found in the slow introduction of OA topics as a priority of academic and vocational educational systems of all levels that contribute to the education of agricultural professionals. The consortium includes higher educational institutes (Agricultural Universities of Romania, Slovenia and Bulgaria), farmers’ organizations as well as technical partners (Greek Research & Technology Network & University of Alcala, Information Engineering research unit). As a result, research and academic organizations with expertise in learning technologies closely cooperate with enterprises that are active in rural areas and public bodies that support training of rural SMEs to develop a training program for VET trainers of rural SMEs. With the combined actions of these organizations, the project aims to meet the raising demands in the field of training OA trainers and familiarize them with new ICT and training tools, so to improve their competiveness.