Regional Education and Employment Alliances Erasmus Project

Project Title

Regional Education and Employment Alliances

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

Context/background
The context behind the REAL project was compelling – given youth unemployment was persistently high in Ireland and across Europe and was increasingly impacting young university students, who after graduating, struggled to find employment commensurate to their knowledge and skills. REAL sought to empower young unemployed or underemployed graduates to become entrepreneurs and high value employees in a short period after leaving university. The focus of the REAL project was primarily on arts and humanities graduates, among whom the rate of un/der employment is greatest and the educators that supports them.

Number and Profile of Participating Organisations
REAL was delivered by a cross-sectoral partnership led by Louth County Council (Ireland), known for its commitment to collaboration as a means to pursuing excellence. They were joined by Newry and Mourne Cooperative (UK) an enterprise agency specialising in VET training and regional economic development programmes, with whom they delivered the Cross Border Alliance. Univations (Germany) is the enterprise training arm of the Martin Luther King University whose holistic approach to innovation training is reflected in highly successful online learning platform “Univations Academy”. Together with the University of Szczecin (Poland), they worked on the second cross border Alliance, known for its work on innovation in services which has contributed to development of highly successful cluster of creative businesses in its region. The partnership was completed by Canice Consulting, an international consultancy in the field of business VET with a growing specialism in digital learning and marketing and Mindshare Consulting, whose Director is a recognised authority in innovation education and new pedagogical approaches. Meath County Council, Ireland joined the partnership as Associate Partner in year 2.

Description of main Activities undertaken
The REAL partnership adopted a new strategy of Alliance Building bringing together stakeholders in employment, education and economic development including VET providers, universities and colleges, enterprise development agencies and local authorities in the format of two Regional Employment and Education Alliances. They were mandated to explore the structural issues that generate a skills mismatch between university educated students and the current labour market, inventory existing resources and commit to collaborative actions to address these issues in a REAL Action Plan for their region. While the target for stakeholders involved was at least 44 stakeholders,53 stakeholders were involved in IO1 (29 in the Ireland-UK REAL Alliance and 24 in the Poland – Germany REAL Alliance).

Based on their learning, the partners systematised the process and lessons learned in the form of a REAL Toolkit, which was published and actively promoted as a means of replicating the Alliances in other regions. The REAL partners also developed, tested, published and promoted a dynamic training course, “Innovation Invitation” directly targeted at recent graduates, Unlike other innovation courses which are highly academic in focus or aimed at start up entrepreneurs with a fixed business idea, or teach innovation based on technological invention, the REAL course introduces learners to the contemporary understanding of innovation, focusing on the psychological/personality drivers of creativity as the basis of innovation and which acknowledge the importance of non-technological innovation to create value. The course is particularly relevant to graduates in the creative industries, a high growth area in partners’ own regions.

Results and Impacts
• 53 stakeholders were involved in the two Regional Employment and Education Alliances and contributed to their respective Action Plans Thus surpassed the target of 44 to be involved
• The course was tested with 8 tutors and 95 students who had graduated with a primary humanities degree in the last five years, surpassing the target of 60 students as part of pilot test.
• The online course modules have been taken a total of 2365 times with the course downloaded in full as a zip file 261 times.
• 16 follow up meetings regarding implementation of Toolkit in other European regions (target of 12)
• 11 regions implementing the Toolkit leading to the creation of a Regional Educational & Employment Alliance (target of 3)

Longer Term Benefits
Participants of the Alliances have increased their understanding of causes and manifestations of the skills mismatch and have gained exposure to more intelligent, collaborative approaches to overcome it, and directly apply solutions best suited to their region. This is addressed in detail in our External Evaluation Report.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 217843 Eur

Project Coordinator

LOUTH COUNTY COUNCIL & Country: IE

Project Partners

• NEWRY AND MOURNE CO-OPERATIVE LTD
• PIETRI JOSE ANTONIO
• UNIWERSYTET SZCZECINSKI
• CANICE CONSULTING LIMITED
• UNIVATIONS GMBH
• MEATH COUNTY COUNCIL