Soft Skills & Creativity Assessment and Testing for Volunteers in Times of Crisis Erasmus Project

Project Title

Soft Skills & Creativity Assessment and Testing for Volunteers in Times of Crisis

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 : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Creativity and culture

Project Summary

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has led unprecedented challenges not only in healthcare and economy, but also on the level of human cognitive, behavioural and operational skills. This “new normality” can be described in the acronym VUCA: velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. In this world of continuous, unpredictable and widespread changes, new ways of thinking and new individual and organizational skills are needed in order to cope with these challenges.

The Corona crisis has also led, especially in times of lock-down and in areas that are most affected by the pandemic, to developments in the field of volunteer work which for years seemed unthinkable: Voluntary work and the associated assumption of responsibility in civil society have gained a completely new appreciation. People not only volunteer for the well-being of their neighbours, or offer interactions with people who cannot leave the house or take on shopping services. They also take on activities that have nothing to do with their actual job where support is urgently needed: in care, in agriculture, or in the mobility economy, or in the creative sector which is economically and financially affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Regardless how different in terms of professional background the volunteers are, they have one thing in common: Volunteering is a way to gain new soft skills like team spirit, cognitive empathy, communication skills, intercultural competence, stress management, discipline, and self-confidence. Volunteering is an effective learning environment, especially for those people who had to realize that their professional activity is by no means systemically relevant in terms of crisis management. Strictly speaking, volunteering is a great opportunity, namely that of acquiring and validating soft skills and then being able to use them in subsequent professional environments as additional qualification.

However, how can a volunteer recognize and validate those new skills? How can an employer be made aware that creative and cultural skills can be an added value in stress situations or for the creation of teams, or intercultural tasks? Consequentially, it is absolutely fundamental to properly validate those “soft skills”, i.e. new personal competences. Although the wording suggests otherwise, “soft skills” can make the difference in working life and can equip young people and adults to come up with creative and innovative solutions to face unprecedented risks, societal challenges as well as to unveil opportunities that can are needed in a critical context.

Therefore, the overall aim of the SOCRATEST project is to provide organisations which employ volunteers with support and guidance to implement internal systems of recognition of soft skills and creativity potentials, in order to empower volunteers to enhance their skills development and competences that reinforce creativity and flexibility in working environments that are characterised by velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

In order to reach this objective, the specific objectives are
– to create Soft Skills and Creativity Identification and Assessment Tools, in order to support volunteers to recognize and validate their own soft skills, increase the awareness of the importance of soft skills in professional life, and to recognize informal and non- formal competences through evidence gathering;
– to elaborate Self-Promotion Tools which will assist volunteers in promoting their soft skills they have acquired in volunteering, and provide the instruments they need to use for presenting and taking advantage of their soft skills in an effective way;
– to make these materials available at a multilingual and interactive e-Platform and as mobile apps for smart phones, where parts will also be available as podcasts or can be activated by smart-home voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri.

All products will remain accessible at least five years after the end of the project, i.e. until 2028.

SOCRATEST targets EU countries who suffer most from the pandemic, among them Italy, Portugal, Austria and Greece. The transnational collaboration will benefit from the various experiences and competences of the partnership which consists of i social partners, institutions working with volunteers, organisations working with people with disabilities, associations from the creative and cultural sectors, adult education institutes, social research centres and ICT experts for the development of open educational resources (OERs).

The primary target groups for our project are organisations which employ volunteers in their daily work. The secondary target group are the volunteers themselves who will be able to use the assessment and promotion tools and for whom the visualisation, documentation and recognition of formally, non-formally and informally acquired soft skills and creativity potentials will provide opportunities for their personal, socio-educational and professional development.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 299495 Eur

Project Coordinator

WIDE Srl & Country: IT

Project Partners

• AKADIMAIKO DIADIKTYO
• INTEGRA INSTITUT INSTITUT ZA RAZVOJ CLOVEKOVIH POTENCIALOV VELENJE
• QUALED obcianske zdruzenie pre kvalifikáciu a vzdelávanje
• Unione Generale del Lavoro
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DO PORTO
• E-C-C VEREIN FUR INTERDISZIPLINARE BILDUNG UND BERATUNG EDUCATION-CULTURE-CITZENSHIP