Creating a safe and healthy learning and working environment - symposium at the XX World Congress 2014

Creating a safe and healthy learning and working environment - symposium at the XX World Congress 2014
August 2014, Congress Center, Frankfurt

The Symposium held on 26 August at the XX World Congress on Safety and Health at Work 2014 – Global Forum for Prevention in Frankfurt, Germany, was a follow up to the joint workshop “Mainstreaming OSH into education: Towards a culture of prevention” that took place at ILO Training Centre Turin in 2012. The symposium in Frankfurt focused on the fundamental question, how the education system, the community and the world of work do interact. Within three workshops scientists and practitioners from the three policy areas exchanged what they have in common and investigated how they can work together to build a culture of prevention. The symposium was organized by ENETOSH in cooperation with the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS), the All-Russia Institute for Occupational Safety and Labour Economics (VCOT) and the Centre for Applied Health Sciences (ZAG) at the Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany.

Chairs of the symposium were Steve Horvath, President and CEO of CCOHS and Ulrike Bollmann, coordinator of ENETOSH. The moderator was David Gold, Gold-Knecht Associates, Switzerland, supported by the three workshop-moderators Ulrike Craes, BGW Academy Dresden, Germany; Lester Claravall, Oklahoma Department of Labour, USA and Tom McDaniel, Siemens Energy, USA.

More than 100 people, coming from different regions of the world, joined the ENETOSH symposium in Frankfurt. Divided into the three groups the audience set out into searching solutions by changing the perspective between the groups. The method was: Ask questions! The moderator David Gold explained: “Only those, who ask questions, can hope for innovative and meaningful answers.”

The questioning was based on a brief statement done by one representative per policy area: Peter Paulus, Leuphana University Lüneburg, represented the education sector; Sue Boychuk, Ministry of Labour Ontario, Canada, represented the world of work and Louise Logan, President and CEO of Parachute, Canada, the community field.