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Improvement on the accessibility of welding related training courses

It is a fact that the number of qualified welding personnel has been decreasing over the last years, and a way to reverse this trend had to be developed since industry has difficulties in contracting skilled workers in this field ("Shortage of welding personnel", DVS, 2008). It was estimated that in 2010, the shortage of welders reached 200 000. The industry using welding represents an added value of € 86 billion in welding and related activities.Nowadays, the process of substituting the well experienced welding professionals leaving the job market is not answering the industry/market needs. Comparing to ICT specializations, the welding and joint technologies professions seem not to be so appealing for young people. In the scenery of economic crisis, it is quite important to call to younger’s attention to different opportunities, namely at an early stage of the education, like secondary schools. It was intended to make students aware about the choice of following a career in a well paid welding related job like professional welder or welding engineer.As so, the aim of this project was to support the improvement on the accessibility to welding related courses using best practices developed by the Swedish(SVETS) and Finish(WSF) partners focusing the secondary school students who are about to start his/her professional life and transferring them to other countries as a mean to revert the downward spiral regarding the number of welding related personnel nowadays.The consortium had a strong geographical representativeness, knowledge and expertise in training and qualification of welding related personnel. IS (PL) acted as the applicant of the project and EWF (secretariat) as the coordinating partner, being also responsible for project dissemination the throughout Europe. The SVETS and WSF transferred their experience and knowledge in what regards to its expertise and strategy used in the actions conducted in Sweden and Finland as well as in the development of promotional materials and marketing campaigns for secondary school students. ISQ (PT), IS (PL), IIS (IT), ASR (RO) and MHtE (HU) acted as target countries concerning the implementation of the new strategy for promoting the EWF Qualification System.The main outcomes of ACCESSWELD were: promotional material translated into Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Lithuanian and Hungarian; preparation of a didactic game to be used as a tool to attract young people to welding related career and organization of seminars and workshops for secondary school students to promote the EWF Qualification System in welding technology professions.The main impact resulting from this project was an increased awareness of the students regarding the existence of a Harmonised Welding Qualification System, which diplomas are recognized in 29 European countries. The image of welding as a "cool", "clever" and "clean" technology was also expected to be improved with this project running.
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