Alpe-Adria Working Mobility – Intercultural Competences in Career Guidance Erasmus Project

Project Title

Alpe-Adria Working Mobility – Intercultural Competences in Career Guidance

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Regional dimension and cooperation

Project Summary

Background of the action:
The Commission’s initiative Agenda for new skills and jobs aims to help the EU reach its employment target for 2020: 75% of the working-age population (20-64 years) in work. According to the Eurostat data, unemployment has increased sharply as a result of the crisis, from a rate of 7.1% in 2008 to a peak of 10.9% in 2013. Although the rate for August 2016 drooped to 8,6% there are still huge structural problems, especially in the field of youth-unemployment in the EU. On one hand there are currently over 20.97M people unemployed in the EU, and on the other there are over 1,132,300 job vacancies in the EU according to EURES data.
One of the key elements which can improve unemployment rates is equipping people with the right skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow, enabling them for the international working mobility. In 2006 European Parliament has issued Recommendation on key competences for lifelong learning. Key competences are essential in today’s knowledge society and guarantee more flexibility in the labor force, allowing it to adapt more quickly to constant changes in an increasingly interconnected world.

Objective of the action:
The Alpe-Adria Working Mobility project aimed to improve intercultural competences of professionals working in career guidance and counseling from the field of employment and education in the Alpe Adria region. Only the right personal, interpersonal and intercultural competences of career counselors and consequently of job seekers can contribute to reaching the employment goals set in the Europe 2020 strategy.
Among the 8 key competences, Alpe Adria Working Mobility project has focused in particular on enhancing those, which involve intercultural understanding and social and civic competences that refer to personal, interpersonal and intercultural competences. These are the competences and skills that equip individuals to participate in an effective and constructive way in social and working life.

Who were the project partners?
Project partners were institutions that perform career guidance, education and training services for the unemployed on regular basis (except the IT partner).
In total there were 6 project partners, out of which 5 were institutions offering career counseling as their core activity, from Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. Most of the partners have already collaborated together on other projects before this one.

Why was this project necessary?
Through their daily work the project partners have identified the need for further vocational development of professionals working in career guidance and counseling related to international employment opportunities. With continuous European integration and reduction of administrative difficulties there are more and more job seekers who consider working in another EU country, hence also the career counselors have to be equipped with answers to their questions. Therefore the partnership has decided to develop a comprehensive training course for international career counseling.

Which activities were undertaken:
The emphasis of the project was given to enhancement of intercultural competences of counselors, which enables them to offer better guidance to job seekers and prepare them for the entrance onto Alpe Adria region Labour market.

The results of the project were:
1. Training programme for international career counseling
2. Web tools and materials for counselors and job seekers in EN, SI, CRO, IT and DE languages
3. Pilot implementation of training programme with training mobility
4. ECVET certification of the training programme

With the development and implementation of the training course we have enabled over 60 professionals working in career guidance to respond to the needs of international labor market of the Alpe Adria region. With knowledge and skills gained through the training programme they are now able to guide job seekers in their consideration of employment opportunities abroad.

How the results can be used?
In addition the project has contributed to the exchange of good practices among project partners and help to better understand the needs of labor market in Alpe-Adria region. Through pilot implementation of the training programme, in which we have included career guidance professionals from Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and Austria, the project results are beneficial also for job seekers from the four participating countries interested in working mobility, who can now use and exploit project results and deliverables for the purposes of employment in Alpe Adria region.
Although the training programme covered the cultural specifics of the four participating countries, it could be adapted and transferred to any other European country or region.

Publicly accessible online materials and tools are available in national languages of the participating countries but also in English, which enables any user (career guidance professional or job seeker) to apply them on

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 277683,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

PAPILOT Zavod za vzpodbujanje in razvijanje kvalitete zivljenja, Ljubljana & Country: SI

Project Partners

• BEST INSTITUT FUR BERUFSBEZOGENE WEITERBILDUNG UND PERSONALTRAINING GMBH
• AD FORMANDUM IMPRESA SOCIALE – SOCIALNO PODJETJE
• HRVATSKI ZAVOD ZA ZAPOSLJAVANJE
• Virtualis, poslovno svetovanje in storitve, d.o.o.
• Kabi d.o.o.