In May 2013, the FormaForm training centre for trainers established its headquarters in a building in the Einstein science park in Louvain-la-Neuve. It is 30 kilometres south of Brussels, midway between the national capital and Namur, the capital of Wallonia.

Launched in 2008, FormaForm is a result of the partnership between the three leading public vocational training organisations in French-speaking Belgium: Forem, the Centre for Vocational and Continuing Training in Wallonia, its equivalent in Brussels, Bruxelles Formation and IFAPME, an institute for work/study training for small and medium-sized enterprises. Establishment of FormaForm in Louvain-la-Neuve marks an ingenious pooling of resources focusing on a mission shared by the three organisations: training of trainers, who will in turn educate future trainees.

There are almost five million people in French-speaking Belgium; a population admittedly small numerically in the European context, but with a long tradition of excellence arising from the quality of its workers and artisans. This quality has always been based on training, an indispensable tool in economic reorganisation and development of occupations.

FormaForm provides continuing education for vocational trainers and offers a structured and appropriate response to evolution of the trainer profession, which should contribute to combating a current shortage of trainers in some sectors of French-speaking Belgium. Content of the training modules was developed jointly by educational experts of the project partners.

FormaForm is not an initiative of French-speaking Belgium alone. It received major financial support from the European Social Fund (ESF). Moreover, this project is in line with a much broader strategy: that of Education and training 2020. It draws its inspiration from key texts that recommend lifelong training of teachers and trainers, the Copenhagen process and the Bruges communiqué. In doing so, it fulfils a key indicator of the EQAVET recommendation on quality of vocational training.