Borderless Career Guidance Erasmus Project

Project Title

Borderless 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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Inclusion – equity; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

The ERASMUS+ project “Vocational Orientation – Borderless” was submitted by two schools, both located in rural, rather structurally weak regions (Eifel and Auvergne). Both the Thomas-Morus-Gymnasium and the Collège Anne de Beaujeu take seriously the extended task of schools to strengthen the vocational orientation of the students entrusted to them. Both schools offer concrete career guidance, whereby the regional proximity of Daun to French-speaking countries makes it obvious to direct the students’ career orientation towards France. We therefore approached our project as a building block in Franco-German economic cooperation, whereby we wanted to encourage our students to expand their professional orientation beyond their familiar horizons. The project was aimed at students between the ages of 14 and 16 – young people who are now embarking on their professional future.

In our project, the young people got to know some areas of the working world in Germany/France. This was done by visiting various workplaces as a group, through presentations in the participating companies, and through creative work that the students carried out in order to get to know the profile of each workplace better.

In concrete terms, the project was intended to give the German and French participants an understanding of the working world in the other country – the young people were to find out what concrete job opportunities there are for them in nearby European countries. By getting to know people who have actually made their professional way in the neighboring country, they should be encouraged to look “beyond their own nose”, which is an important experience in the international orientation of our students who – as already mentioned – grow up in a close, rural environment. By working on the evaluation and processing of their research in German-French tandems, they should get to know each other as well as their countries, cultures and ways of life better.

Our students were to experience that it is indeed possible to complete an internship or even an apprenticeship in the French-speaking neighboring country – the realization that the language skills they acquired at school are indispensable on this path was another important goal of our project.
This was intended to make the students – but also the teams of teachers involved – aware of the importance of European citizenship. Both school communities thus had the opportunity to open up to a professional future on a regional and European level.

So much for our plans, which could only be partially realized. In March 2020 – a few days before the return visit of the French group in Daun – this meeting had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. All other activities that were already planned and booked during and after this travel week (workshop at the Nürburgring, shadowing of French-German tandems at apra norm, interview appointment at Gerolsteiner, career information exchange in Daun) were also canceled. Thus, we lacked the in-depth activities where we would have collected the material that was intended for the production of our final products or partly for the presentation.

With the first encounters, our participants were able to gain insight into the topic, establish contacts with peers in the neighboring country, benefit from a short-term exchange linguistically, personally and culturally. We processed these gained insights in some products (picture exhibition with portraits of professions, follow-up and evaluation of the company visits, presentation of the own region/environment, escape game), which were still possible in joint work. Additions to these final products were made afterwards – as long as face-to-face teaching was possible – in class or in an ERASMUS-AG.
This, as well as the subsequent experience that we were no longer allowed to travel, that the borders to the neighboring country were temporarily closed to prevent a pandemic, certainly sensitized the students overall to the importance of the European idea.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 52395 Eur

Project Coordinator

Thomas-Morus Gymnasium Daun & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Collège Anne de Beaujeu