Youth Entrepreneurship and Employment Support Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth Entrepreneurship and Employment Support

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Context
The Europe 2020 Strategy has defined among others, one key priority that is to raise “Europe’s employment rate – 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, especially women, the young, older and low-skilled people and legal migrants”. The achievement of this important goal, that has important implication for the more general objectives of at least 4 of the five headline targets that have been set for the EU to achieve by the end of 2020 as employment; research and development; education; social inclusion and poverty reduction.

The project partners identified 3 main needs:
-VET teachers need to acquire the skills to train their students on the aware use of Social Media to find job opportunities and develop their entrepreneurial spirit;
-companies need to improve the use of social media for promoting their brands
-To foster a cooperation between the enterprises and the VET system in order to ameliorate the matching of job offer and demand, the visibility of companies and to promote youngsters employability

Objectives
The aim of the YEES project is to foster cooperation between the Vocational Education Systems and the world of work to promote the inclusion of youngsters in the labour market in an effective way using social media and crowdsourcing based tools.
Participating organisations
The YEES project involved:
-9 contractual partners of 4 different European countries, including institutions with experience in the development of innovative projects for VET schools and by institutions representing the interests of companies;
-30 schools (mainly vocational);
-30 companies;
-more than 200 teachers of all subjects;
-around 4.500 students;
-30 companies;
-more than 40 associated partners including associations, education centres, business associations, public authorities, Universities.

Activities
The project’s main activities and related results and impact are:
Activity 1) Guides for Teachers and Trainers
The project partners created the contents of 2 Guides to be used by VET teachers and trainers with their students to guide them on how to exploit social media and the web through step by step guidelines on selected social media tools available on the net, how to create a good digital reputation for employment as potential employee or like young entrepreneur, on how to promote a company Brand through the web and the social media.
Activity 2) Adopt an enterprise – Crowdsourcing practical experience
The project partners developed the “Adopt an enterprise – Crowdsourcing experience”. The Crowdsourcing is a production model that utilizes the latest labour-collective work to develop products or solutions to a given problem. Through the “Adopt an enterprise” experience, students, companies and teachers, duly guided by the partners, developed the brand image of a real enterprise in each country according to a transnational approach. In each partner country, the actors involved in the national crowdsourcing experience were the following:
an enterprise, whose digital identity had to be developed, represented by its CEO;
4 teachers in representation of the project partners’ countries: Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain;
4 classrooms in which the above mentioned teachers usually have classes;
1 representative for each contractual partner.
Activity 3) MOOC based training course “Social media for new jobs”
Starting from the contents and the materials of the Guides, the project partners developed an e-learning based training package addressed to VET teachers, students and company managers. The course is organized in 3 modules:
-Personal Digital Identity
-Digital Identity for Companies
-Monitoring of Changes in the Labour Market

Each module is organized in chapters and each chapter includes+ a video lesson, a multiple choice questionnaire and a proposal of individual and collaborative activities for students. The MOOCis available in English, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The total duration of the courses is about 30 hours.

Activity 4) YEES portal
The YEES Portal makes available all the main project outputs produced within the project and is organised in Sections. In addition, each section’ contents are duly introduced, providing to the user all the necessary information and guidance on how to access and exploit the contents.
Impact
As far as the impact of the project is concerned, the YEES project provided:
-the VET teachers with the suitable skills on how to train their students on web reputation related issues;
-the students with a specific guidance on how to use Social Media to find job opportunities and to develop their entrepreneurial spirit;
-the companies with tailorised tools on how improve the use of social media for promoting their brands.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 181014 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES SANT VICENT FERRER & Country: ES

Project Partners

• OTTIMA plus Sp. z o.o
• Connectis
• cosefi
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Vilela
• PIXEL – ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE
• Xano Channel asociación para el desarrollo comunitario
• Centrum Ksztalcenia Zawodowego i Ustawicznego