Career Perspectives in Europe – Chances and Challenges Erasmus Project

Project Title

Career Perspectives in Europe – Chances and Challenges

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Transport and mobility; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

One of the targets of the European Union strategy “Europe 2020” is the growth of employment and the reduction of early school leavers. This is what we wanted to support with our project “Career Opportunities in Europe – Chances and Challenges”. Strengthening the attractiveness of Europe´s higher education and strengthening of training and labor mobility was a major matter of this project.
Our students are in the middle of an identification process and they will soon graduate. Visions and fear of unemployment are omnipresent as the unemployment rate among young people is rising. With the open job market in the European Union new opportunities and challenges apply and have to be made accessible for the students. So this project aimed at preparing the students as best as possible for the chances that await them in the European Union.
The range of the participating schools implied a lot of different questions. Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland displayed an interesting reflection of the members of the EU. The different schools and the combination of the students were also different and all participating schools and countries have to deal with different problems when looking at the job market. The Polish school for example faces unemployment problems because it is situated in an area with no industry and students have to leave their home when desiring a university degree. The Italian school on the other hand is situated in a bigger city with a wider range of chances. Here, universities, companies and industry have much more to offer. With the project we worked against the economic imbalances and taught, trained and motivated our students to reach for higher goals on the European job market. We wanted them to open up and consider their opportunities on a different level.
About 150 participants and accompanying persons of the participating schools actively took part in this project. But at the local meetings other students and adults joined the events.
The students prepared the topics of the meetings. The project “Career Opportunities in Europe – Chances and Challenges” concentrated on different topics, which were set in a chronological order and considered the needs of the different participants. At the first meeting in Bologna we started with an introduction and we took a closer look at what is done at each school to prepare the students for a career. A joint guideline, which will be helpful for all schools, was conducted here as well as a survey, which gave us a feedback on the students’ needs. The second topic (learning activity in the Netherlands) dealt with the “work chances in each region” and was followed by the third topic – “CV and application in Europe” in Poland. The Europass CV as well as language and travel will be of much help here. The meeting in Hermannsburg complements the topic with “Opportunities and Challenges after school”. After these different issues we concentrated on the European Union and “Challenges for the European Union” was the focus in Bologna. It´s to emphasize that cooperation with big and small companies like VW, training institutions and working parents were very important at the different learning activities.
Different results complemented our project, supported the students, teachers and the school and accomplishments were disseminated (e.g. joint guideline on how to prepare students, leaflet of pros and cons of working abroad, Europass CV, language, mobility, interviews and videos, project calendar, surveys, PowerPoint Presentations and many more.
The impact is positive in many ways. Students now have the possibility to recognize and use their free mobility since options became visible for them. Our encouragement motivated them.
For students as well for teachers the project established a consolidation of the foreign language and the intercultural competence. The contact with students from other countries was also interesting for the parents of the native students. They learned about the customs of the European countries.
Finally, we are still trying to implement our achievements, results and the learnt input in our schools’ curricula. In the end we hope that we can make a lasting impact on the European Union and we want to make a change to ensure that our students are prepared for Europa after their school life.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 83615 Eur

Project Coordinator

Christian-Gymnasium Hermannsburg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Colégio Miramar, S.A.
• Marnix College
• ZSO w Hajnowce
• IST. D’ISTRUZ. SUPERIORE ALDINI VALERIANI – SIRANI