The Project
Our international mobility strategy and objectives primarily constituted the 10 best practice principles of the European Charter for Quality in Mobility. Given this opportunity of the certificate we were able to further develop these and extrapolate on our current strategic policy to incorporate the aspirations of the EU 2020 strategy.
We wholly concur with the aims of this strategy i.e. in a changing world; we want the EU to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. There are five objectives on employment, education, social inclusion, innovation & climate/energy - to be reached by 2020, we anticipate our activities helping address the first 3, striving to achieve greater cohesion between our policies and those of the EU 2020 strategy in particular incorporating such flagship initiatives as: European Platform against Poverty and Social Exclusion; An Agenda for New skills and Jobs; Youth on the Move.
To enact these policy changes it is fundamental to further incorporate the 8 Key Competences for Lifelong Learning. These are needed for personal fulfillment, social inclusion and employment in a knowledge society and are a prerequisite for adequate personal performance in life, work and subsequent learning (European Reference Framework).
Becoming a Certificate holder was an extreme honour, this emphasized the trust our National Agency had in our organization. More importantly it enabled our organization to plan at a strategic level as we were now able to plan for a 3 year period. We have always believed that the projects are not Bhagavat’s but instead belong to all stakeholders. In light of this we contacted all stakeholders, both sending and hosting requesting how we could maximize this opportunity of working together with a mutual aim of incorporating the aspirations of the EU 2020 strategy several suggestions were made the most salient being:
- Greater cohesion between the course and the careers seminar, we realized that often the course we undertook with the young people were the first run on the academic ladder. We set about finding a suitable and relevant course that would incorporate such topics as how to prepare for an interview, interview techniques, maintaining a job and so on.
- Establishing Social Enterprises, an example of this is Turkey, we have formed a partnership with the local municipalities, trainers and the Roma community in order to establish a candle making workshop. The trainers will teach both the Roma and the participants on our project how to make candles; the municipality has offered a shop in a shopping mall to sell them and a market stall, where by both groups can participate. This will directly benefit both groups, provide extra skills, (i.e. entrepreneurial and soft skills) and assist with social inclusion.
