Vocationally Orientated Culture and Language in Need Erasmus Project

Project Title

Vocationally Orientated Culture and Language in Need

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Integration of refugees; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The aim of the VOCAL in Need project is to transfer innovation from the LdV TOI project VOCAL-Medical (2014-2016) in relation to language and cultural learning in vocational contexts to a new vocational area, namely the security sector. It targets professionals in the security sector who need to communicate with the migrant community, who are often non-nationals, in specific situations where good communication skills can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. In doing so it responds to an important need to overcome language and intercultural barriers when interacting with members from the migrant community. This need has drastically increased as a result of demographic changes and increased mobility by the refugee crisis.
The project aims to provide language and culture training materials contextualized for the security sector, through cooperation
between educational institutions and professionals working in this sector. Two of the five online modules are focused on security staff, while two are aimed at agencies that work with migrants and refugees. The fifth modules deals with intercultural matters.

The aims of this project are:
• provide security staff with a practical preparation tools for communication with refugees/migrants who do not speak the national/
official language
• provide language training materials for the security sector, which is often neglected
• enable security staff to become more aware of (inter)cultural issues which impact on their skill set
• improve the ability of security staff to interface with non-natives and therefore perform better during emergency situations
• increase autonomous and innovative language learning (via mobile phone)
In order to fulfill these aims the project created and tested the content of a web-based/mobile application designed for the above
purposes.
Vocal in Need addresses the professional training needs of the security staff sector through virtual journeys developed on a
website. It also provides access to this material via mobile phones. Users are led through a variety of real life problematic situations relating to their jobs. The programme provides technical language relating to these situations as well as background logistical and cultural information for each of the countries involved.

Vocal in Need tries to address the wider context of the current refugee crisis as most migrants might not be used to living in a state with similar laws or legal contexts. Some migrants have very different values, especially where the law incorporates a different view of the rights of citizens and the role of the state and its representatives, such as police. Migrants are better served if they understand and respect the values of their host country, but at the same time people dealing with them have to learn and understand the reasons for their differences, including unlawful behaviour, in order to avoid an escalated confrontation and reach mutual understanding and respect.

It created four on-line training modules in eight languages (Arabic, Turkish, English, German, Bulgarian, Italian, Lithuanian and Russian) as well as an associated intercultural module, using the format developed in the original VOCAL project. These are available via a website and mobile phone applications. The language modules were developed not just bilingually, but multilingual (making any language combination possible) and cover specific topics related to the target groups and intercultural aspects of this.

The partnership drew on the skills of professionals in the educational and language training sectors, as well as experts in intercultural training and IT and a quality manager who is a native English speaker. It involved former partners from the Vocal-Medical project who are familiar with the structure and methodology that were successfully applied in order to create www.vocalproject.eu. and www.vocal-medical.eu. All project partners have established links with the target groups, which were involved in the project from the start as part of the needs analysis and later on in the piloting phase. The University of Applied Police Sciences (P2) played a leading role as they had access to police trainees.

The main result of the project is a contextualised language and intercultural application for security and agency staff available for both personal computers and mobile devices (the “Mobile Assistant”will be an application for smart phones).
The project contributed to bridging the gap between security staff and the migrant community and support better relationships. Increased awareness of diverse cultural behaviours will lead to better communication skills.

Results of the five training modules is available under https://vocal.erasmus.site/category/modules/.

The Mobile Assistant can be downloaded from https://apps.apple.com/app/id1462669892 (Apple version) and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.dcnet.vocalinneed (Android version).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 289294,38 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY TRALEE & Country: IE

Project Partners

• DANMAR COMPUTERS SP ZOO
• Hochschule der Sächsischen Polizei (FH)
• PLOVDIVSKI UNIVERSITET PAISIY HILENDARSKI
• DIE BERATER UNTERNEHMENSBERATUNGS GESELLSCHAFT MBH
• Esenler Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• FORMAZIONE CO&SO NETWORK – CONSORZIO DI COOPERATIVE SOCIALI SOCIETA COOPERATIVA SOCIALE
• MYKOLO ROMERIO UNIVERSITETAS