Tackling youth unemployment

Feeling lost is something experienced by a lot of young people and can be found throughout Europe. In Spain more than 55 percent of young people are unemployed; this does not give young people a great deal of perspective, prospect or hope in finding work.
 
With the EU-Project Youth Employment Support (YES), die Berater® established an innovative training and coaching toolkit to support HR managers, recruiters and in-company advisors who employ and educate young people from marginalised groups.
 
The Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation Project „Big Bang“ adapts these existing materials to address current issues of youth unemployment and to ‘build a bridge’ between work-based culture and the culture of social exclusion. This will include addressing the problem of low ambition of young people and those who are participating in anti-social and/or negative peer group behaviour, such as ‘gang’ culture and offending.
 
The issues addressed by the YES and Big Bang project have now been presented at The European monitoring conference in Brussels on 11th and 12th February 2014 in order to contribute to work-based learning (WBL) and support of youth employment and economic competitiveness in Europe. Established apprenticeship systems are of high relevance when it comes to youth employment, and at the conference one of the key questions was what types of collaboration and support is needed to attract and engage more companies, and particular SMEs, in training young people as the future workforce in Europe

Big Bang is and EU Project funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme. 

You want to now more? Go to http://bigbangllp.eu or contact Bozica Ilijic, Projectcoordinator of the Big Bang Project: b.ilijic@dieberater.com  

Changing perspective through wikis

 

Phones, computers, and mobile devices are essential tools for managing the economy, transportation, and also in the training sector! The Internet is much more than a series of 1s and 0s; it is a complex human system with its own mechanisms, codes and zones of influence. The pervasiveness of this environment in our lives is so important that the internet has become the breeding ground for the major transition from Homo Sapiens to the Homo Numericus.

At first glance, this transition appears chaotic, uncontrolled, unpredictable and completely diffuse, especially in wiki environments. But behind this apparent disorder, chaos in motion, it could be that a new fundamental is at work, with very specific properties. And its applications remain largely unknown.

This fast development can sometimes scare or simply demotivate. Why update one's skills if today’s technology becomes obsolete tomorrow? Who has never felt helpless and a little stupid in front of his computer? Who has never lost important files? Thought a message was sent by a human being when it was sent by a bot? Got lost within multiple versions of a document exchanged with colleagues? Felt outdated and out-of-touch? Or should we see all this as a challenge? The challenge of developing more social and writing skills and critical thinking, the challenge of generating more opportunities to make our projects successful, to see them adopted by the wider community, the challenge of moving "out of the box" in our professional practices. Anticipating developments and changes is one of the strategic skills that any person must acquire.

And this is the challenge and hope of the project WikiSkillls: getting you to hop into the wiki culture.

WikiSkills is a European project funded by the European Commission aiming to analyze and apply benefits of adopting a wiki-culture within educational settings. Traditional learning environments are often characterized by one-way knowledge transmission processes in which the teacher, as only source of knowledge, assigns a learning activity that is conducted autonomously by the student.

Through WikiSkills participants from different educational sectors, cultures and ages (schools, universities, professional and adult training) learn how to use wikis for their socio-professional development. The project developed, implemented and evaluated an innovative training curriculum focusing on how to make the best use of wiki environments in educational settings, so as to reach high learning objectives and foster a community of learners within Europe.

Through this, WikiSkills promotes innovative pedagogical approaches that foster creativity, competitiveness, employability and entrepreneurial spirit, equity, social cohesion and active citizenship.

 

To learn more about WikiSkills go to www.wikiskills.net

EU project managers gaining PACE



Holger Bienzle, die Berater® at the AIVD (on the left)

Holger Bienzle of die Berater® presented the PACE (Project Actors Community in Europe) project at the annual conference of the AIVD, the Slovakian umbrella organisation of adult education providers.

In the presence of high officials from the national ministries of labour and education and of EAEA, the European Association of the Education of Adults, the perspectives of transnational cooperation in the light of the upcoming new EU funding programmes were  discussed by more than 60 stakeholders.

PACE, the emerging Project Actors Community in Europe, which offers ample learning and sharing opportunities for European project managers, was very much appreciated by Slovakian adult educators as a chance to build on previous project management know-how.

How to validate soft skills for today’s global labour market place

Professional life and career development is increasingly determined by continuous learning to adapt to rapidly changing demands. In the service sector, personal, social and organisational competences (SPOC) are especially necessary; thus becoming competitive factors at the job level. The European project VITA utilises a unique and innovative validation system (LEVEL5) for these competences to provide evidence of human potentials for learners, educational professionals and employers.
VITA Final Conference in Dublin - Honoured by the presence of the Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciarán Cannon T.D.

The VITA system is aimed to assess and evidence competence developments by means of the LEVEL5 system which is specifically designed to assess and visualize personal, social and organizational competences acquired in non- and informal learning settings. VITA has been realised within then European countries. The final conference in Dublin was held in a historic place with a long tradition of studying and learning, the Dublin City University.

The Minister addressed the audience with a very inspiring speech, in which he also underlined the importance of improving continuously competences and skills:




Ciarán Cannon T.D., Minister of State for Training and Skills

“Today’s conference is the culmination of two years’ work which has been exploring the validation of social, personal and organisational competences across a range of education sectors in ten European countries. These soft skills, as they are often referred to, can be difficult to measure but are a very important aspect of today’s global labour market place. Such skills may not be learned in a formal setting but are often acquired in informal settings through day-to-day interactions – at school, at home, in the workplace or through active citizenship in your local community. These skills have become a competitive factor in the labour market and through this project VITA aims to build a standardised method of measuring these soft skills.” 


One of the additional highlights of the VITA final conference was the award ceremony in which the award winners were given the VITA prize for innovative project ideas.

Winners of the VITA Award and the VITA project partners

If you want to learn more about the VITA project please visit: www.vita-eu.org or contact our project manager Bozica Ilijic, b.ilijic@dieberater.com

European Proof of Voluntary Work

Volunteering does not only benefit others, but also benefits the volunteer as an individual. Within volunteering settings various social skills are being developed, but these are hard to document on paper.

The RIVER system, which was developed in the EU Grundtvig project of the same name, is an assessment and evaluation method for recognising the development of competences that are gained during volunteering activities. The RIVER methodology is now available as a management tool for institutions and networks that organise volunteer activities. For a better understanding of the method, a brochure as well as a manual and training materials have been developed and are free for download.

Whether and to what extent competencies are further developed through volunteering, can be evaluated by using different RIVER methods - from the self-assessment, to tandem evaluation or a focus group. The RIVER methodology is based on LEVEL5, which is an approach and instrument to document and visualise competence development.

The approach is supported by a software to create a meaningful evidencing document (certificate) including a 3D visualisation of the development of the volunteer.
You want to use the RIVER methodology for your organisation? Follow these links and learn more about RIVER and its application:

RIVER Brochure

RIVER Manual

RIVER Training