European Mentorship Programme Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Mentorship Programme

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Cooperation between educational institutions and business; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Educational biographies of adolescents are characterized by transitions that guide the future path: From enrolment, to the decision for a secondary school and certainly with the greatest challenge the transition to the professional world. Experiences and a look at the media show that entering the professional world is an enormous hurdle for many young people. Uncertainty stems from the indecisiveness, which suits one, the fear of not being prepared for the challenges, the fear of the unknown and the demands to integrate into new living environments with different conditions.
There are often differences the expectations of companies towards their new employees and the ideas of young trainees. The high number of dropouts at universities suggests that many do not feel prepared enough for the challenges or have made the wrong choice. Mostly there is no systemic connection between the school and the host institutions such as vocational school or university.
In order to counteract dropouts in the university or during training, the students should be prepared for the professional world. The project aims to promote their interests and to help them develop a realistic picture of what awaits them after school. This is primarily possible through experience and contact with people. This is where the project comes in. The direct relationship with an adult outside of school reality is a basic part of the concept. In the project, the participants should be given the opportunity to gain insights into the professional world beyond the existing professional information from the schools. This information should be learned through contact – with partners in their age and mentors from the professional world. The students should have mentors in Germany and Sweden outside of school, whom they encounter during the mobility at their place of work and who they also keep in contact with during the project to gain insight into the world of work and themselves get to know better. Mentors come from very different professional fields and in addition still from different countries.
In addition, universities should also be visited. Both the diverse possibilities of the modern professional world and the international orientation help to increase the likelihood of meeting the interests of the students.
Because several things are decisive for the professional decisions, the project consists of two phases with different content orientations that correspond to the two years. The methodology here does not differ, but the content orientation. While the first year is about training, access and general requirements the focus of the second year is on career development opportunities and a comparative view of competitors. It’s more about the question of what opportunities open up with the corresponding profession. The aim is to collect information about the companies and the professions in general and to compile the training conditions and opportunities in the respective countries. This information should also be made available to other school students in the form of brochures and testimonials.
The target group of the project are students between the ages of 16 and 18 who are about to finish their school career and thus before the transition to the professional world, or who have to decide in the upper secondary school for a profile direction.
The activities are the core of the project and their most important phases, since the strongest effects are expected here. After intensive preparation for mentoring at school and after having contacted the mentors before, the pupils will initially experience an encounter with their partners outside the learning and professional environment. After the contact to the mentors has been established and the students have done their research based on what constitutes the mentor’s profession, the experience should be summoned in this activity. The pupils and their partners should go to the mentors’ companies and gather practical experience for which they had previously prepared theoretically.
There are tried and tested questionnaires and interview guidelines (see mentoring program of the CIS), which should be used in the project and should also be used in Germany. The results will be published with the consent of the companies.
The experiences during the project in companies or universities are written down and presented to the school public in the form of exhibitions with the opportunity for interviews. They should be presented to the other students in the project in a predetermined form (exhibition / blog / portfolio) and then published in revised form for the other students. The portfolio also serves as the basis for evaluation, as it allows information about the experiences made and the effects of the project on the students. The concern here is that the compilation, since it was made by students, is designed in such a way that it addresses the other students and is appropriate to their level of knowledge.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 59816 Eur

Project Coordinator

Clemens-August-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Calmare Internationella Skola