Maternity Opportunities and Mainstreaming Erasmus Project

Project Title

Maternity Opportunities and Mainstreaming

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Gender equality / equal opportunities; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

Built on a concept of maternal resilience, capable of breaking the stereotype about mothers at work, the overall MOM project has been aimed at empowering unemployes mothers, appraising the skills that woman naturally learn during motherhood, in an employability perspective. The specific MOM’s aim was to enhance, transfer, adapt and exploit the method carried out by Piano C with a target of unemployed mothers, then design an European innovative training program to turn parental skills into job skills, assessing it according to the ECVET framework. MOM’s set of competences comes mainly from a non-formal learning process. One of the project main result has been making these competences visible, validated and recognized in order to capitalize the learning results.

The second, aim was to create a platform where unemployed mothers and caregivers can find open training tools aimed at reinforcing their employability, assessing and enhancing their motherhood competences and developing other professional skills. Thanks to the MOM Platform the target groups can join a peer community where find learing resources, motivation, information, suggestions and opportunities aimed at fostering and reinforcing their presence in the job market.
MOM’s target groups are mothers that lost their jobs due to maternity; women who face difficulties in finding a job; women returners; single mothers and pregnant women who want to reinforce their competences for a future job.

Motherhood is still seen as a “period of crisis” within companies and even within people themselves. The percentage of women that don’t go back to work after the maternity is high in all the involved countries, motherhood is either managed with attention and care, but with high costs or it is considered as a phase of professional and personal weakening.
However, there is plenty of scientific and sociological evidence demonstrating that motherhood is a moment of intellectual development, skill growth and explosion of energies. If only for the simple fact that nature is concerned with propagating life and therefore it endows new mothers with enhanced abilities and survival instincts.
Moreover, there is a clear affinity between the complex environment that a parent needs to manage within the family (regarding the intensity of the relationships, the development of authority, the desire for habilitation of others, and motivational and listening skills) and the modern workplaces.

The MOM main activities have been:
– enhancing the MOM method with a target group of unemployed women;
– designing a EU training program to turn parental skills into organizational skills, assessing it according to the ECVET, making competences visible, validated and recognized;
– making the innovative method free available and easily accessible to the target group, through open, free online resources;
– promoting the MOM approach and training resources through dissemination activities and multiplier events across the involved countries and beyond;
– continuously monitoring the quality of the MOM outputs in order to adjust and improve them by the end of the project.

In terms of results and impact, MOM reached the following goals:
– design of an innovative training path and programme, including smart tools to be available in an open platform, including tools to assess the competences (MOM Curriculum, MOOC for mothers, MOOC for trainers, MOM platform, ECVET Integration);
– implementation of the MOM programme in 5 countries (Italy, UK, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria);
– 137 women that attended the MOM pilot training path;
– 76 trainers that learned how to implement the MOM training with the target goups;
– More than 400 women registerd in the platform to attend the MOM training path;
– More than 25.000 reached by social media;
– More than 5.000 people reached by social media ADV;
– More than 39.000 people reached by individual partners’ networks (Online and offline).

In the long-term, the MOM method will change the paradigm of motherhood in the workplace in a revolutionary way. All the resources are also in English to allow the spreading of the contents and tools in other countries. Indeed, all partners are committed at keep animationg and promoting the MOM platform and all related resources after the end of the project. With this aim, a Partnership Agreement has been signed by all partners. MOM started to radically change the perception of the maternity as a way to reach a set of skills and essential competences related to organization, problem solving, mediation, communication, leadership. On the other hand, MOM started to change existing views and stereotypes within companies (foremost with managers) and also in wider public, making the maternity leave and maternity as such seen as a period of growth, also professionally.
Finally, this will increase the employability of women who are now discriminated.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 401505 Eur

Project Coordinator

Associazione Piano C & Country: IT

Project Partners

• INOVA CONSULTANCY LTD
• INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM FOR CITIZENPARTICIPATION SDRUZHENIE
• LBV srl
• FONDAZIONE POLITECNICO DI MILANO
• AYUNTAMIENTO DE ALZIRA
• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS
• EUROMASC – European Masters of Skilled Crafts