Certifying Out Of Home Operators in Europe. European Forum for Certification.

For the 7th consecutive year a session on organic certification of out-of-home operations was held at the BioFach in Nuremberg, February 2010. The focus on organic catering in Europe is a growing movement. A number of standards and statements are presented thus adding to the sharing of information, experiences and inspiration across borders and organisations. It is hoped that this exchange will facilitate beneficial contacts between those involved in the setting up and development of national and private catering certification standards. The mass catering sector is growing and therefore attracts increasing attention at pan‐European level; The EU regulation for organic food and farming (EC No 834/2007) which came into force on January 1st, 2009, obliges the European Commission to report to the EU Council on the scope of the regulation before the end of 2011, with a clear reference to ‘organic food prepared by mass caterers’. Moreover, a Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions of 16 July 2008 on ‘Public procurement for a better environment’ opens up for promoting an increased consumption of organic food and farming products as tools to mitigate climate change. In the following pages the presentations given at the BioFach session on certification of out‐of‐home catering are to be found

Certification of organic mass catering - a need for harmonization across Europe?

To evaluate the state of the art of organic certification in out-of-home catering, a survey was carried out among relevant stakeholders in several European countries. The Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 about organic production specifically excludes what is called mass catering. Hence, a range of diverging systems for certification of organic catering and restaurants have been developed. This study presents opinions about a potential EU-wide harmonisation of an organic certification scheme for mass catering from relevant stakeholders. Certification bodies and other public authorities as well as stakeholders close to the catering practice were generally positive towards the idea of a harmonisation process. Several stakeholders should be involved in such a process, and organic associations and certification bodies were considered likely to be the strongest drivers. The study demonstrates that even the experts are sometimes unsure about details in this part of organic certification. This illustrates the complexity of this field

Bilingual Proficiency Among California's Health Care Professionals

Explores the policy options for encouraging and measuring second-language competence among healthcare providers in California

GAIN Certification

abstract: Live music venues have a tremendous impact on their community, both positive and negative. They provide a location for local and touring musicians to showcase their art in a controlled, professional setting, while bringing members of a community together to share an experience and blow off some steam. Inversely, the noise, waste, and influx of people can have detrimental impacts on the surrounding area, and a poorly designed and poorly run event can ruin a customer’s experience. By combining advice from experienced industry professionals with established strategies outlined in existing certifications like ISO, LEED, APEX/ASTM, etc., the GAIN Standard provides a practical roadmap for venues to save money; reduce their impact on their community and the planet; and deliver a better experience to their customers and employees

Incorporating Environmental Health into Pediatric Medical and Nursing Education

Pediatric medical and nursing education currently lacks the environmental health content necessary to appropriately prepare pediatric health care professionals to prevent, recognize, manage, and treat environmental-exposure–related disease. Leading health institutions have recognized the need for improvements in health professionals’ environmental health education. Parents are seeking answers about the impact of environmental toxicants on their children. Given the biologic, psychological, and social differences between children and adults, there is a need for environmental health education specific to children. The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation, in partnership with the Children’s Environmental Health Network, created two working groups, one with expertise in medical education and one with expertise in nursing education. The working groups reviewed the transition from undergraduate student to professional to assess where in those processes pediatric environmental health could be emphasized. The medical education working group recommended increasing education about children’s environmental health in the medical school curricula, in residency training, and in continuing medical education. The group also recommended the expansion of fellowship training in children’s environmental health. Similarly, the nursing working group recommended increasing children’s environmental health content at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing nursing education levels. Working groups also identified the key medical and nursing organizations that would be important in leveraging these changes. A concerted effort to prioritize pediatric environmental health by governmental organizations and foundations is essential in providing the resources and expertise to set policy and provide the tools for teaching pediatric environmental health to health care providers

A Framework to Evaluate Software Developer’s Productivity The VALORTIA Project

Currently, there is a lack in companies developing software in relation to assessing their staff’s productivity before executing software projects, with the aim of improving effectiveness and efficiency. QuEF (Quality Evaluation Framework) is a framework that allows defining quality management tasks based on a model. The main purpose of this framework is twofold: improve an entity’s continuous quality, and given a context, decide between a set of entity’s instances on the most appropriate one. Thus, the aim of this paper is to make this framework available to evaluate productivity of professionals along software development and select the most appropriate experts to implement the suggested project. For this goal, Valortia platform, capable of carrying out this task by following the QuEF framework guidelines, is designed. Valortia is a platform to certify users' knowledge on a specific area and centralize all certification management in its model by means of providing protocols and methods for a suitable management, improving efficiency and effectiveness, reducing cost and ensuring continuous quality.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Users' trust in information resources in the Web environment: a status report

This study has three aims; to provide an overview of the ways in which trust is either assessed or asserted in relation to the use and provision of resources in the Web environment for research and learning; to assess what solutions might be worth further investigation and whether establishing ways to assert trust in academic information resources could assist the development of information literacy; to help increase understanding of how perceptions of trust influence the behaviour of information users

The Benefits of Human Resource Certification: A Critical Analysis and Multi-Level Framework for Research

Despite the huge success of marketing certification to human resources (HR) professionals, does it benefit individuals, employers, and the field of HR? We know very little about whether certification has an impact on any important individual- and organizational-level outcomes. This article provides a brief history of HR certification and its purported benefits. Then we review the literature on perceptions of HR certification, including a survey we conducted with about 190 HR professionals. Finally, we present a multi-level model of hypothesized HR certification effects. In this conceptual framework, which unifies both micro and macro levels of analyses (i.e., individual, unit, organization, and profession), we derive 13 testable propositions to guide future research on the benefits of HR certification.HR certification, Multi-Level Framework for Research

Global Dialogue Report - Middle Income Countries: Hungary

The consultation addressed the trends, opportunities and challenges for the future of philanthropy in Middle Income Countries. Trends which can be observed are: growing local resource mobilisation; greater use of new technologies; continued lack of a culture of giving; lack of credibility of the non-profit sector; no tax deductions or complicated procedures for charitable giving; suspicion by government of foreign funding; greater involvement of younger people in decision-making