Career Comeback Support Program for Women Erasmus Project

Project Title

Career Comeback Support Program for Women

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

In this project, Career Comeback Support program for Women (CCSP-W), the aim is to increase the awareness of contemporary business environment for unemployed women who had work experience previously, and also encouraging them to get back into the workforce by providing Online and mobile platforms as well as a relevant curriculum. Gender-related differences in employment rates and conditions have been discussed over the decades by the researchers and governments. Women, as a disadvantaged group, have suffered from less stable employment due to various factors. Some of the reasons for less stability in the workplace can be listed as marriage, childbirth, gender roles in the society and cultural issues. Knowledge society transformed business world into an environment where intangible assets are considered the main value of the organizations. There was a radical change from traditional business environment to contemporary social environment where the focus is not only on consumers and organizational needs but also on environmental, social and ethical issues. Diffusion of rapidly changing technology into the business world discouraged people, especially women to return to work force after a long break. Moreover, intense penetration of the technology use and social media require developing new skills and abilities for a successful career. The complexity of such an environment demands a more integrated approach across different dimensions of contemporary business to regain women work force.
Considering these, the main purpose of this project is to increase the awareness of contemporary business environment for unemployed women and also encouraging them to get back into the workforce by providing an Online awareness-training system and its curriculum. In this project, there are three objectives:
1) Providing them with online and mobile platforms in all 5 languages of the partners (ie. English, Turkish, French, Greek, and Polish) to adapt them to the social business era considering possible opportunities and necessities in the new business world.
2) Assisting potential entrepreneur women who would like to run their own business by networking functionality and knowledge base tools that are provided. Women can also sign up to the web sites of other countries for further matching activities those could allow them to start international business.
3) Providing especially women with a platform where they could find job opportunities, important news related to business life, funding opportunities, etc. that would facilitate their return to work life.
After the kick-off meeting, project started with need analysis report. All the partners contributed to this report both with a desktop research and with a survey applied to target group. Being a clear map of the status quo, the prepared report founded a basis for all other activities of the project. Following the need analysis, the requirements defined were reflected to a model for career comeback system. This model is reported in a functional design document (FDD) that both the online and mobile platforms relied on. Almost simultaneously, curriculum development phase started. First, the most necessary topics for the curriculum were defined and agreed on a partner meeting and each partner (besides BIS) worked carefully on an assigned topic. All those curricula were initially prepared in English, proofread by the English partner, and translated into all other 4 languages of the partners. BIS, on the other hand, prepared the Web Portal first, based on FDD. Then they transferred the functionalities and content to a Mobile Application Developed. All those functionalities and content were tested for several dimensions like usability with Pilot Testing held in all partner countries simultaneously. Required fixes were applied and the products became ready for introduction to all related parties. With a final conference in Istanbul, Turkey, the portals were formally presented to the society in general, and to some women NGOs specifically. A multilingual Project Book including the curricula prepared and a users’ guide for the platforms was published and distributed during the conference.
In the long term, the platforms can be given to all voluntary women NGOs to provide a higher benefit to the society. Thanks to the modular structure of the platforms, some additional content can be developed and added to the system, and existing content can easily be updated. Also, the framework prepared can be used for some other projects, with modifications, to deliver additional benefits not covered in that project.
After all, according to us, the project was successful in attaining originally foreseen benefits. Moreover, all the partners learned a lot from each other, gained new abilities, and shared their culture with each other ending up with understanding of and respect to differences.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 278268 Eur

Project Coordinator

BAHCESEHIR UNIVERSITESI FOUNDATION & Country: TR

Project Partners

• IASIS
• SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK
• ITG CONSEIL
• CENTRE FOR FACTORIES OF THE FUTURE LIMITED
• BIS COZUM BILGISAYAR VE ENTEGRASYON HIZ. VE TIC. A.S.