Innovative and Integrated New Solutions for Sustainable Employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Innovative and Integrated New Solutions for Sustainable Employability

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 for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The INTENSE project stands for an approach to improving the employment situation of “disconnected” young people, which cannot currently be achieved through employment-centred initiatives. By “disconnected youth” is meant a subgroup of so-called NEETs – low-educated youth with psychosocial, psychic, multifactorial problems and problematic lifestyles. Relevant studies identified a Europe-wide need for this target group, highlighting the need to develop holistic approaches to sustainability. This need provided the basis for the project consortium to develop and implement a client-centred approach.
The consortium consisted of 7 partners with a project management office specializing in educational projects – Eskwadraat NL, vocational education and training Institutions – dts Pärnu (EST) and SBH Südost GmbH (GER), vocational school Izmir (TR), a school organisation specialised in projects for young people with a low educational background – De Spinaker (NL), a partner specialised in development of professionals LCEducational Ltd. (CY) and the University of Málaga (ESP) for the scientific monitoring and development of an evaluation approach that can be applied during the implementation phase.

The objective was to develop solutions for educational staff considering the following aspects.
1st compensation. This aspect aims at the systemic coaching, which enables the clients to recognize their own need for support, to inquire independently of the support of the coach, to develop their own goals and to work on them. The central idea is transition management, which not only focuses on the transition from school to work, but also takes into account every development step that shortens the gap to the job market and establishes self-confidence and relevance to life. For this purpose, a variety of training methods and tools as well as a comprehensive and proven Train the Trainer concept were combined in one platform. The focus is on methods of conversation and coaching approaches that have their origins in humanistic psychology.
2. Prevention. The studies that identified the need also formulated a request for national assistance systems to take preventive action in order to produce as few NEETs as possible and, if necessary, to start the holistic approach at an early stage. In order to meet the requirement of prevention in the project context, we included relevant stakeholders in the development and implementation right from the start, as well as developed guidelines and training content.
3. Structure and cooperation. The point accompanying the above is to explain structural aspects regarding the success of integral approaches. In doing so, we focused on the formal and legislative structures of national assistance systems in Europe and the unconditional requirement of cross-sectoral cooperation. This aspect was considered with the development of an evaluation approach.

Main activities
Development of a comprehensive eLearning platform in all partner languages (EE, ENG, ESP, GER, GRE, NL) with theoretical explanations, explanatory videos, methodical descriptions, exercises, curricula including factual-temporal structure and workshop descriptions, guides, evaluation reports incl. technical appendices and a project charter. All content is freely accessible on the platform, provided with OER standard and available as SCORM.
All three main aspects were included in a course for “Transition Coaches”, which was implemented during the project duration in 3 rounds. The methods and approaches learned by the coaches served as the basis for the implementation and evaluation
.
Achieved effects
The evaluation approach proved that the key issues – coaching and interviewing based on methods of humanistic psychology, the approach “change the mindset”, “transition management”, stakeholder involvement and effectiveness verification during implementation already provided concrete solutions to existing contexts. In addition, partnerships and specific follow-up projects have developed on a regional basis in the partners’ network. All partners use the developed content to qualify their own educational specialists.
The long-term benefit is that third parties in the present platform can find an integral approach to trigger changes in coach-client relationship, organizational structure, and action in regional and country wide networks with the aim of achieving equality of opportunity for those who are deprived of their education. Furthermore, there is the possibility to expand the approach, because no conclusive statements are possible in methodological terms.
Central figure is always the transition coach.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 370036,33 Eur

Project Coordinator

SBH SUDOST GMBH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Pärnu Saksa Tehnoloogiakool/OÜ Pärnu Tehnikahariduskeskus
• L.C.EDUCATIONAL LTD
• Nevvar Salih Isgoren Egitim Kampusu-1 Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• De Spinaker / Stichting Ronduit
• VOF Eskwadraat
• UNIVERSIDAD DE MALAGA