Description of the project
Employment is a key priority of Europe. 2020. Since according to the 2016 edition of the report "Smarter, greener, more inclusive?" published by the EU in 2016 (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents) young people aged 15 to 29 belong to "the most disadvantaged groups on the labour market" (p. 27). The unemployment rate among young people, so the report says, is still 11 percentage points higher than EU average. This is why this projects is aimed at providing teenagers with skills required on the labour market and at matching the educational and training systems to produce these skills.
The participating schools in this strategic partnership are united in the intention of providing all students with an improved preparation for the European World of Work. The partners are striving to learn from each other and making use of the expertise and existing links to local businesses. This way they will form a stable network that will support the development of each school and enable students to successfully face the challenges of their professional future.
The project aims to prepare youths across Europe for the world of work both in their native country and in their European counterparts. As part of the European community all schools are motivated to familiarise their students with job markets and access to work places which investigates these issues in a European wide context. Due to the ever expanding growth and nature of the European community it is imperative that students across Europe are engaged with the changing world of work. Participating schools aim to provide their students with a European wide knowledge that focuses on job markets.
The workshops (short term learning activities) will provide students with the means to gain an understanding of different cultures, methods and knowledge of the different job opportunities. It is envisaged that by involving students in the world of work in Europe they will be highly motivated and inspired to seek employment abroad in the future. Since in the course of the project they will visit different companies in different countries they might establish contacts that will help them to start a work placement in one of the companies involved in the project, either within the time frame of the project or with a long-term perspective after they have finished school.
The project will provide students with key employment requirements including how to create a C.V., and how to conduct themselves in an interview. The projects rationale will provide students with insights into types of employment opportunities across Europe and also the different types of employment that varies across each European country. This includes of course intercultural learning.
Students involved in the project will be able to form links between the work they undertake in the project and in school through various courses and workshops dealing with the topic of the world of work. During the workshops students will carry out mock interviews, undertake field trips to a number of corporations and industrial companies in order to develop their understanding of the international workplace. We will be able to offer mini job shadowing opportunities. In addition, experts from companies and job agencies will talk to and inform the students in a more detailed way.
Transnationally, students will gain a deeper appreciation of job mobility across Europe and they will gain new skills including language development, searching for and looking at internet portals for job advertisements, and writing country specific CVs. The project will use a number of different communication media to aid students with their engagement. These include the use of TwinSpace and other forms of social media and the internet in general. This will also lead to an improvement in different areas of ICT skills, starting with some improvements in dealing with word processing programmes, filling in online applications (which are not common yet in all European countries). But there will also be improvements in more complex ICT skills such as producing and publishing instructional videos/ tutorials.