Understanding my Journey: Supporting Soft Skills Development for Young People Erasmus Project

Project Title

Understanding my Journey: Supporting Soft Skills Development for Young People

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

UMJ achieved its intended goals by producing a set of outputs that offer support to practitioners and young people. The outputs developed help young people to recognise and reflect upon their soft skills development more effectively. 7 partners that had never worked together previously, collaborated on all project outputs. The result was a partnership that had a diverse range of skills with access to a broad target group. Partners engaged with young people through various interventions, including mobility, training, volunteering and entrepreneurship programmes. The tools developed offer support to both young people and practitioners and offer maximum impact in terms of soft skills development that can be quantified upon. The objectives set by the project were to, improve young people’s engagement with and ownership of their soft skills development, increase young people’s employability, to raise awareness of the importance of soft skills development.

The objectives were achieved with the production of 4 intellectual outputs. Due to the Covid19 pandemic the partnership requested and were granted a 3 month project extension. The extension resulted in the project running for a total of 34 months. With the withdrawal of the Spanish partner the partnership consisted of 7 partners. The outputs developed were:

IO 1: Research carried out by all partners that focused on the relevance of soft skills in all partner countries. Partners held focus groups with young people and practitioners in all partner countries, 115 young people across the partnership took part in focus groups along with 124 practitioners. This led to the identification of the most important and relevant soft skills for young people, in terms of personal and professional development. There were 8 soft skills identified; Positive Attitude, Communication, Adaptability, Time & Energy Management, Work Ethic, Problem Solving & Analytical Thinking, Teamwork, Leadership.

IO 2: Following the identification of the 8 soft skills partners developed and produced a Paper Based Toolkit. The Toolkit is mainly intended for young people who are already involved in some kind of activity or project, such as study, youth volunteering projects, work experience or employability training. By trying out techniques, young people can increase their level of the soft skills and gain in self-confidence. The toolkit contains reading materials and exercises for the young person to work through. Each Toolkit section has been piloted by young people and practitioners to determine its effectiveness and usefulness. The piloting took place across each partner country throughout the summer of 2019. The Toolkit was piloted with 123 young people and 25 practitioners. The Toolkits are available to download from the project website and are available in 6 partner languages.

IO 3: A web based app was developed in order to digitalize the materials developed in IO2. The app consists of the 8 soft skills previously identified. Each soft skill takes the shape of a different mountain and the goal is that as the young person works through each soft skill they will in theory be reaching each mountain top. The app was piloted in each of the partner languages between December 2019 and January 2020. The app was piloted with 110 young people across the partnership. The link to the app is accessible via the project website. It is recommended that the app be used in conjunction with the paper toolkit although it is possible to use it as a standalone tool. The app links to PDF’s from the toolkit.

IO 4: A practitioner guide was developed to support those working with the young person in order to fully understand how to introduce IO2 and IO3. The practitioner guide was piloted simultaneously with IO3. The guide was piloted with 22 practitioners across the partnership.

Five transnational meetings took place. Ireland the UK, Croatia, Italy, and Portugal. The final meeting was held on zoom as opposed to Greece, due to the pandemic. The meetings created a space to collaborate and to discuss the development of the outputs, multiplier events, and the sustainability post project. Large amounts of the project dissemination was delivered through social media networks with the project Facebook page uploading approximately one post per week for the last six months of the project. Email was another channel used for disseminating the project work. As the in-person events were not an option online opportunities were used to share the project tools with guidance practitioners and young people across all partner countries and more widely at European level. Through seven multiplier events partners disseminated the project tools. Six of the ME’s took place after the IO’s were finalised which resulted in all output results presented and demonstrated to 177 participants across the partnership. Two of the multiplier events took place online due to the pandemic. The project produced four Newsletters.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 235434 Eur

Project Coordinator

BALLYMUN JOB CENTRE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY LIMITED & Country: IE

Project Partners

• ACTION SYNERGY SA
• ISTITUTO FORMAZIONE OPERATORI AZIENDALI
• Asociación Dianova España
• ASSOCIACAO NACIONAL DE ESCOLAS PROFISSIONAIS
• O.A.ZA. – ODRZIVA ALTERNATIVA ZAJEDNICI
• RiSE International Limited
• Stowarzyszenie Rozwoju i Integracji Mlodziezy