The project “VET for Employment” (VET4E), led by the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia (LDDK), aims at: - improving availability of qualified workforce through improving compliance of VET to the labour market needs; - facilitating and supporting organisation of qualitative traineeships and work based learning in vocational education and training (VET) system and - developing new tools for the use by the employers and VET institutions to promote work based learning in VET and to support employers, VET institutions and students in human resource development through traineeships. The motivation for the project lies in the problems identified in partner countries: rather low prestige of VET, limited opportunities for qualitative traineeships, low involvement of employers, low level of cooperation between VET institutions and employers, high youth unemployment, problematic transition from education institutions to labour market. In order to address these problems, project will carry out a number of activities aimed at improving availability of qualitative traineeship opportunities and to strengthen employers’ involvement in VET. The main activities planned to reach these goals are: - Carrying out a study on availability, quality and costs and benefits of traineeships in Latvia; - Organising learning visits to Austria and Germany to learn from well-established dual VET systems; - Developing an action plan for improvement of traineeships in Latvia; - Carrying out feasibility study on vocational education in Lithuania; and mutually learning between Latvia and Lithuania in the process of implementing VET reforms; - Developing IT tool on career portal prakse.lv (traineeship.lv) which would ensure opportunity to organise and implement traineeships and work based learning in easy and comfortable way, as well as to collect and analyse data on traineeships - To implement work based learning programmes in two sectors – metalworking sector and pharmacy sector. - To implement a number of initiatives/ mini pilotprojects to promote new IT tool, traineeships and work based learning in different sectors such as facilitating traineeships, namely, combining traineeships in several companies, career support activities, organising training for trainers in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Science, developing mobility projects, organising professional skills competition, certification of traineeship places, organising seminars, organising site visits of pupils or VET trainers in companies, examining work safety during traineeships, piloting examination developed and organised by employers. The main result of the project will be increased number of qualitative traineeship opportunities. The consortium is made of partners from Latvia, Lithuania, Austria and Germany. Partners include the national and sectorial employer organisations, trade union organisation, VET institutions, research and training institution, as well as private companies. Project is also endorsed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia, National Centre for Education and the Municipality of Riga.