The vocational college Castrop-Rauxel (German: Berufskolleg Castrop-Rauxel, short: BKCR) is the institution applying for this Erasmus+ project (KA1). It is also the partner dealing with organizational and project management matters of the project. The BKCR is a secondary school for students having completed at least nine years of school (thus mostly so-called Sekundarstufe II classes) and also offers courses leading to the German university-entrance diploma (Abitur). It is situated in the north-eastern part of the Ruhr metropolitan area, next to Dortmund. Currently, about 2,500 students are attending the college, which offers full-time courses, part-time courses (part of vocational training on the job), and evening classes. This project has multi-level objectives. On the institutional level, this mobility project is one element of our international activities which are supposed lead to the BKCR being a certified “Europaschule”. One objective of our school is to enable students to be responsible and independent individuals. Work placements in other EU countries are a pillar of this endeavor and cannot be substituted by anything else. Below the institutional level, there is the training of educators and child care workers. This mobility project enables our students to prepare for their future jobs in an even better way by seeing how other countries approach their field of work and what their concepts mean in theory and practice. The principles of the Bildungsförderung in North Rhine Westphalia are – together with curriculums and guidelines – the central point of reference for educator trainees. The concept of early childhood education aims at “partaking in society” which the Land NRW intends to implement in the elementary and primary sectors of education, following other EU countries that have already made substantial progress in this endeavor. This project is designed to give 16 of our BKCR students the opportunity to do this. They are trained to become state-approved educators and achieve the German university entrance qualification (Abitur). The students in the course “State-approved educator with German university entrance qualification” complete the first part of the vocational final exams after their three-year full-time course. During their training, they have to spend a total of 14 weeks of work placements. The students chosen for this project are students in their course’s final year and they commit to do a three-week work placement focusing on “conceptional and institutional concepts of educational work in Germany, Sweden, Poland and England”. The central part of this project are the three-week work placements in Sweden, England and Poland, planned for the autumn 2014 and autumn 2015. The first eight students are scheduled to depart for England, Poland and Sweden on October 11, 2014. The second group should begin in the middle of their autumn break 2015. The project’s topic, participation and promoting autonomy of pre-school children, is dealt with in the core subjects of the educator trainee course. Aside from preparing it within the subjects “educational science” and “didactics/methodology”, the stays abroad are prepared by numerous workshops and classes – for example language classes (Swedish and Polish) and intercultural training. During their work placements abroad, our students will observe how participation and promoting autonomy is achieved at their pre-school institutions. The students will document their observations and discuss them with their respective pre-school institution’s advisor. After returning to the BKCR, the project’s participants will enrich the subjects “educational science” and “didactics/methodology” by presenting their newly-acquired knowledge to other students. Their whole classes will analyze and assess the various methods for promoting autonomy of pre-school children. The students of the past years have proven to be highly motivated and qualified to initiate and implement alternative innovative concepts in the child care institutions they worked at after completing their training. This embodies an important positive and lasting impulse for these institutions. Also our partner institutions in the EU as well as the partner institutions of our German partner college “Richard von Weizsäcker-Berufskolleg” in Lüdinghausen benefit from participating in this project. Together with the college in Lüdinghausen, we have held international meetings for and with our partner institutions abroad. For optimizing our cooperation we are considering using eTwinning. Our school, the BKCR, expects important impulses from the students having their work placements abroad. These impulses are also important for putting our school’s philosophy into action.