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Experience For Training
Experience For Training
Start date: Nov 1, 2015,
End date: Oct 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
The economic crisis continues to bring a range of widespread challenges: many people have lost or are losing their jobs, and youth unemployment is at record levels. Areas of existing deprivation are the most vulnerable to the risk of poverty and social exclusion: 16.4% of the European Union's population (approx 80 million people) live below the poverty threshold and Eurostat estimates that 23,815 million men and women in the EU-28 were unemployed in January 2015 (18,059 million in the eurozone). The category of people "at risk of poverty" has expanded in recent years, as it has outlined a kind of "disadvantaged user" presenting multi-problematic characteristics, not only economic but of a those different kind, such as social exclusion or re-integration, health, culture, etc. For this "disadvantaged user", traditional training, work placements and standard paths to employment are no longer an effective solution to integrating into the labour market - even if the person has potential for becoming a productive worker they may need specialist support to address wider barriers, such as support in confidence building, self-empowerment, rebuilding of social networks and relationships.
Another challenge of the economic crisis has been the re-distribution of funds towards countries with a deeper development gap (the so-called social security nets), leading to a progressive decrease in public funding and resources for education and training throughout Europe. Other sources and models of funding are thus fundamental to supporting training programmes, with a particular focus on non public funds, for example by strategically linking vocational training to industry.
For these reasons, the partners felt the requirements to enhance work-based learning paths to answer to the needs of these persons and their target groups, inspiring to the EFT model. One of the important aspects of the EFT model is that the training activity is intrinsically linked to a production activity, that generates the incomes: i.e. the EFT sells its products and services in a competitive market environment. The project aims to promote this first EFT experience and find a model that could be adapted to the project partners' different national contexts, in particular comparing the model with what already exists in each country and working in a first instance on the skills of the coaches and trainers that work with trainees on a day-today basis.
The main outputs of the project will be:
- Work-based Learning Common Framework, with initial desk research on the state of art and a collection of good practices in each partner country;
- Development of a Professional Skill Profile of coaches/trainers in work-based learning environments;
- A joint staff training session for coaches in Italy (5 days) and 20 participants;
- A final Project Report, that illustrates the Common Framework of Work-based Learning, the Professional Skills Profile, the results of the joint staff training session in Italy and the work-based learning methodology.
- 4 multiplier events, organised at key points of project lifetime and the production of intellectual outputs (after completion of the guidelines, the Professional Skill Profile, the joint staff training in Italy and a final seminar in Turkey).
The EFT project targets three main groups: 1) partners’ staff members, coaches/trainers who will participate in the joint staff training and be directly involved in implementing project activities; 2) trainees who will benefit from the improved skills and knowledge of coaches/trainers involved in the project; 3) project stakeholders (VET organisations, universities, public institutions involved in the sector, social enterprise networks and consortiums, private organisations, etc.) that are involved in all stages of project development, in dissemination events and exploitation of results.
The results of the project will be published on the project website, as well as on the Erasmus+ projects portal of European Commission, as well the mailing list of project stakeholders, created by collating all partners’ contact details. They will then be spread further thanks to the website, mailing list, leaflets and associated activities, carried out by Aspire I Limited for UK, EVT in Italy, BEST for Austria, AID for Belgium, SPI for Portugal and Innovative Educators Association for Turkey. Partners' European networks will be used as dissemination channels and mainstreaming action at International level.