Upskilling Pathways for Adults through ICT and social media Erasmus Project

Project Title

Upskilling Pathways for Adults through ICT and social media

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: Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The UPA project fits into the context of increasing the employability of adults. One of the key priorities of the Europe 2020 Strategy is indeed to raise Europe’s employment rate – ensuring more and better jobs, especially for women, young people and older workers, so to achieve a benchmark of ” 75% employment rate for women and men aged 20-64 by 2020 – achieved by getting more people into work.
One of the main obstacles to the full achievement of this ambitious objective is the high rates of low-skilled and low-qualified adults in the labor market and often job vacancies are hard to fill due to the lack of appropriate skills. Moreover, the demand for digital technology professionals has constantly grown by 4% annually in the last ten years. Finally, almost half the EU population lacks basic digital skills, with around 20%
of people having none.

Education and training should equip everyone with a broad range of skills which opens doors to their personal fulfillment and development, social inclusion, active citizenship and employment. For these reasons, the UPA partners identified solutions to support adult learners in their integration in the labor market establishing effective links between adult schools and the world of work and entrepreneurship through social media and ICT. The organizations involved in the project work every day with adult students in a situation of vulnerability facing multiple barriers (such as social exclusion, poverty or discrimination) because of their lack of qualification to be incorporated in the labor market.

The final aim of the UPA project is to promote the entrepreneurial spirit of adult learners using social media and ICT to create new e-enterprises ensuring increased opportunities to access and remain on the labor market in an effective way. The project has intended to achieve these objectives by:
-supporting adult teachers and trainers in the acquisition of the appropriate skills to train their adult students on the conscious use of ICT and Social Media to find job opportunities and develop their entrepreneurial spirit
-increasing the employability of adult students by acquiring and improving their key and transversal competences and adapt them to the digital era
-promoting the inclusion of adults paying particular attention to adult vulnerable groups with low skills and qualifications promoting equality between women and men, combating discrimination, promoting tolerance and a high-level of quality and sustainable employment, combating long-term unemployment and fighting against poverty and social exclusion.

To achieve these objectives, the project implemented several activities. Both project partners and identified participants were actively involved in the different stages of the implementation. The selection of people to be involved in the project was particularly focused to include adult vulnerable groups and to respect gender balance. Entrepreneurs and policy-makers were also involved in some activities to provide feedback and suggest improvements.

The activities carried out are:
-Realization of “e-entrepreneurship” training package, a collection of video lessons aimed to provide technical information on the use of social media;
-Testing of the training package by adult teachers and adult trainers;
-National training sessions on “how to become an e-entrepreneur”, during which adult students were trained to develop their entrepreneurial spirit through social media and ICT to create new e-enterprises. Company representatives have collaborated in the workshops dedicated to the exploiting of social media and ICT for creating a new e-enterprise in Europe.
-International training “Adopt an enterprise experience” by using social media and ICT, a 5-day activity in Poland where 5 adult learners selected for each project partner had the opportunity to experiment the learning tools developed by the project;
-Development of the international conference on “International e-entrepreneurship”, held in Portugal at the end of the project, with the participation of all the partners, adult teachers, trainers and learners, public authorities in charge of adult education policies, trade unions, company representatives to promote the project results and activities.

The project provides tangible results that will remain available even beyond the end of its implementation. Tools like the training package, the learning community, teacher and students training format, interviews to e-entrepreneurs, the UPA magazine are all available and freely accessible on the project website (https://www.upa-project.net/). Moreover, the partners created a FB project page as a repository of information and pictures

In terms of quantitative impact, the project reached more than 100 adult trainers and 400 adult learners (half of them with fewer opportunities). Companies involved were 30. Other stakeholders were also reached by the project thanks to the involvement of associated partners.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 59410 Eur

Project Coordinator

ALPHABET FORMATION & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Associação Empresarial de Penafiel
• OTTIMA plus Sp. z o.o
• Associació Empresarial L’alqueria Projectes Educatius
• Ziosem s.r.l.