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Fachkräfte für Europa
Fachkräfte für Europa
Start date: Feb 1, 2016,
End date: Dec 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
The participants of our project are students of our acknowledged 3-year professional training in „Assistant Tourism & Event Management“ as well as „Assistant Sport & Event Management“ and for the first time in Assistant Tourism & Event Management Health & Wellness". As an integral part of their studies they have to do a 25-week internship abroad in the third year of their professional training. Each year, about 50 students start this kind of training at our school. Those who will be doing their internship as from August 2014 have been attending our training since October 2012 or October 2013 respectively. Only students who can provide a school leaving certificate, i.e. having passed A-levels at grammar school or can submit a certificate from a technical college are entitled to register at our school. Thus, they look back on 5-8 years foreign language training at school and have already obtained advanced language skills once they start their professional training. In general, the internship is done with one of our well-known associated partner companies both in Great Britain and Spain. Our partner companies are hotels, tour operators, event agencies, sport clubs or wedding planer agencies with whom we have been collaborating for several years now. Right now we are trying to find new partners like clinics or other companies from the health and wellness industry. Our objective is to enable our students to prepare for their future career in an international work environment and to help them meet the job requirements on an international basis. They are supposed to get qualified as potential future experts in the tourism and eventmanagement sector in the European or global marketplace. The purpose of their professional training is to become familiar with dealing with customers, service providers and employers from different cultures and countries. They are meant to prove their expertise in international hotels or hotels chains, in travel and event agencies as well as sport clubs.To meet the above mentioned job requirements, we regard students’ proficiency in foreign languages as a major prerequisite. The 25-week internship with an international agency can be seen as an important milestone to gain a sound knowledge and high fluency in foreign languages, i.e. in everyday language as well as in business language. During our foreign language classes, we therefore focus first of all on oral communication skills and on presentation skills. Our students practise everyday business communication like telephoning, face-to-face interviews, moderation of group discussions and even conducting negotiations. In addition, they intensively learn to actively use a proper, formal business language in any sort of business correspondence, business reports and presentations. Besides the language lessons – preferably led by native speakers – students practise and further develop their language skills in specific courses like “Project on the Job” or subjects like economics. Our students also use the chance to stay in close contact with those students who have just returned from their internship abroad. Talking about experiences made abroad makes it a lot easier for the younger ones to decide on the country where they would like to do their internship. As regards our subjects event and project management, our students have to plan, organise and execute customized events during their professional training. The purpose is to gain some practical experience and expertise in the field of eventmanagement. Furthermore, they become well-trained in dealing with foreign customers, service providers or employers. They learn to treat people of different ethnic background with respect and to show empathy. Our educational institute also offers a kind of individual coaching to every single student to help him build his personality, to strengthen her/ his assertiveness and to give her/ him encouragement to pursue his career objective. We appreciate very much the long-lasting collaboration with our partner companies and employers abroad. We are thankful that they give us a clear picture of the job requirements in their country. This collaboration seems to be beneficial for both partners. Giving our students the opportunity for an internship abroad, foreign employers get a deep insight into the content of our training program as well as into the set of qualifications/ skills of our students. As a consequence, our training program gets more and more acknowledged in Great Britain and Spain. So the number of interesting and demanding job offers and job opportunities increases year by year.