Go to Latvia!
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Oct 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project arose out of the need to secure international work experience for students of vocational study programmes, which will improve their skills. It will be our first time implementing a mobility project, but we will use the experience of our team members who have helped implement similar projects in the past. The internships will take place in Latvia, in companies in Riga. The project is to start on 1 September 2016 and end on 31 October 2017. 4 groups of students will be sent to Latvia, each consisting of 6 students and 1 supervisor. The target group is the students of the second and third year of study in the following study programmes: Joiner, Upholsterer, and Window Dresser. The partner organization we have chosen has experience with similar activities and has already hosted a number of groups from the Czech Republic. The project will be managed according to the ECVET principles. Therefore units of learning outcomes have been prepared. These units will be used to assess the skills and competences acquired by the students during the internship. Learning Agreement and Quality Commitment will also be utilized. Out of the tools supported by the EU we will also use the Europass-CV and the Europass Mobility certificate. The acquired skills are necessary for attaining the qualifications required of Window Dressers, Upholsterers, and Joiners according to the National Register of Qualifications. The ECVET system will therefore facilitate an easy way of evaluating the outcomes and enable employers to easily recognize the students’ work experience.The roles of the partner organizations as well as those of the individual members of the project team have been clearly defined. We put a lot of emphasis on continuous monitoring of the internships and their evaluation, especially with regard to the ECVET principles. The evaluations may lead to alterations in our curricula. The target group, the general public as well as the professionals, including our partners in the education sector will be informed of the project results.Together with our partner we have already defined the content of the internships, which will focus on practical tasks in companies specializing in the subject areas our students study. It concerns both shopping centres or retailers and professional upholstering and joinery companies. Among others, there is a company among them which works for the Supreme Court in Riga or for the Latvian presidential palace. The Window Dressing students will be assigned tasks involving arrangement of displays in exhibition spaces, public spaces in chain stores, and they will have to coordinate the materials and colours used. The upholsterers will focus on furniture restoration, the selection of suitable textiles or leather for upholstering, the choice of padding and the fluffing up thereof, or on the design of the piece as a whole. The joiners will work especially with wood, manufacturing furniture or doors, whether by restoring older items or producing entirely new pieces. There will be an experienced staff member guiding the students, while also checking that the students have acquired the skills defined in the unit of learning outcomes. The students will therefore have to defend their work in English. The project will have a great impact, especially on the target group. The participants will find themselves in an entirely new situation, where they will have to truly prove their skills. Apart from that they will also have to pay more attention to what they are doing, how they are executing the given tasks, and how they are presenting themselves. This will help to better prepare them for their future jobs. Because their skills will be assessed by the company itself, the students will gain an important reference regarding their competences, which will be useful especially when searching for their first job, whether in the Czech Republic, or abroad. The “Go to Latvia!” project is our first international mobility project. With its help we wish to significantly update the teaching methods at our school and become a leading vocational education institution in the Liberec region. 2016 has been declared The Year of the Crafts by the Association of Small and Medium–sized Enterprises and Crafts of the Czech Republic. With this project we wish to support this idea, because we are aware of the continually decreasing numbers of students in vocational education. We want to fight the rooted stereotypes and show both the target group and the public that there lies a great future in having learned a trade, and that tradesmen will find jobs not only in the Czech Republic, but also abroad. Also, if the work of a tradesman is done diligently, it is a proud reflection on its creator.In the long-term view, we wish to continue implementing mobility projects. In implementing this project we would like to gain new experience, so that we can expand our activities in the future to include mobility projects for teachers as well.