The project main characterizing aspects are the choice of the target group of low qualified employees who have not completed upper secondary education, and the notion that the workplace must be considered as a learning environment. The overall work program aims at developing tools and methodologies for 1) identifying and validating competences in the workplace, 2) producing self assessment procedures which can motivate and foster self consciousness and self evaluation of transparent, documented and recognized formal and informal skills; 3) opening gateways to re-training and lifelong learning to make it easier for low-qualified individuals to develop their own competences; 4) transferring the potentialities of the project products to other sectors than the target (financial) sector and to a transnational level. The concrete meanings of VOW are therefore a) the visibility of competences to individuals, so that it can serve as a motivational factor for their educational development and their access to lifelong learning; b) the visibility of competences to companies, so that they can adequately manage the human resources and develop more appropriate educational and training opportunities for the low qualified employees; c) the visibility of counselling and guidance as key methodologies and tools in the process of validation; d) the visibility of non formal and informal competences, so that their validation can promote the deserved impact on the educational and training policies.