The project “Vocational Excellence, Policy and Enterprise United for Hospitality Management Skills Adapted on Environmental FootprintMethods (GreenHost)” has identified two specific needs in the hospitality management and wider tourism industry that it aims to address:
a) Shortage of Skilled Staff: According to DEHOGA (2021), EFFAT (2022), recruiting and retaining a skilled workforce is the sector’s biggest challenge, especially post the pandemic, but this also must to be understood in the wider context of the contemporary major need for upskilling/reskilling in all VET sectors, including tourism and hospitality, as highlighted by CEDEFOP’s Skills Panorama (2019).
b) Becoming Green and Sustainable: Based on recent studies (Adedoyin and Bekun, 2020), the tourism industry, which includes hotels and the hospitality industry in general, as well as the transportation and food and beverage industries, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change. In this direction, the European Council’s Recommendation on VET for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience (2020), and the Osnabrück Declaration on vocational education and training as an enabler of recovery and just transitions to digital and green economies (2020) must be also taken under account.
At almost the same time, the European Commission has adopted the Recommendation on Environmental footprint methods (2021), to help companies calculate their environmental performance based on reliable, verifiable and comparable information and provide more environmentally friendly products and services.
GreenHost combines a mixture of 19 partners from 7 countries that allow for interactions, exchanges and upward convergence between VET institutions of all levels (ISCED 3-8) and industry representatives, with the main objective to integrate green and digital practices into the hospitality management curriculum, and help students, professionals and trainers to upskill and reskill.
Green Transitions – Building the capacity of adult educators to apply Intergenerational Learning for environmental education
The Green Transitions Project aims to increase adult educators’ knowledge and skills on environmental education and climate change through a Training Course and Capacity Building; design a methodological tool guiding adult trainers to apply Intergenerational Learning in their work; and design an interactive simulation game for adults and young people with quests and learning scenarios.
The project will be implemented through four work packages, including the development of a Training Course and Capacity Building, a Guide on Intergenerational Learning, an interactive game on environmental education, and dissemination and exploitation of project results. These activities will involve research, content development, pilot testing, and evaluation.
The main project results will be a Training Course, a Guide on Intergenerational Learning, and an interactive game, all available in English and all partners’ languages. The project also expects to increase knowledge and skills of adult educators/trainers on environmental education and climate change, as well as to enhance intergenerational engagement and knowledge transfer between younger and older adults concerning important climate change and environmental issues.
Turning Blue – Integrating young offenders through the blue economy
Bringing together 9 partners from 5 EU countries, the overall aim of Turning Blue project is to create new cooperation mechanisms and training materials on sustainable blue economy to inspire and engage disadvantaged young people serving time in prison (between 16 and 30 years old) to pursue a sustainable ‘blue career’ in one of the Blue Economy sectors. The partnership will start by building a roadmap with the key blue economy sectors with a high potential to employ young people exiting the prison, creating the stepping stones for the Turning Blue network. Informed by the results of the roadmap and inspired by the young people’s expectations, expert partners will develop an introductory course on Blue Economy to increase awareness and attractiveness of blue economy careers, targeting at least 84 young people in prison from 5 different EU countries. In parallel, a transition model will be created to ensure a well-articulated process between prison services, professional counsellors, blue economy sectors and civil society organisations. The model will be supported by (1) an online job platform dedicated to facilitating an individualized and customised job-placement of these young people; (2) a mentorship programme to provide on-the-job learning and support, pairing the youth with a mentor. In total, it will engage at least 30 blue economy employers and lead to a minimum of 25 job retentions. In between, the project is expected to deliver capacity-building actions to more than 88 professionals in the different targeted sectors (prison staff, career counsellors and industry professionals). Moreover, 5 national seminars, 2 EU Webinars and 1 EU Conference will be delivered, involving more than 350 participants and transferring ‘Turning Blue’ experience.
The Talk2Me project focuses on mobbing directed towards migrant workers. It aims to identify the risks and effects of mobbing in the workplace; to increase awareness of the dangers of mobbing; to create a curriculum, focused on developing specific competencies against mobbing, addressed to managers & HR departments; to teach migrant workers to identify mobbing incidents & to act, according to their rights; to contribute to creating a healthy work environment and to promote inclusion & diversity.
The project will answer the target groups’ needs by conducting an analysis of the current situation regarding mobbing in the workplace & developing an instrument of self-evaluation over practices, policies and actions in the organizational environment. Based on the results of the self-assessment tool, managers & workers will be able to follow a training program, build new competencies and prepare other staff members (HR, administrators, activity coordinators) to identify and deal with mobbing.
The relationship between business, the creativity process, and comprehensive well-being (social, economic, health, or environmental) is what sustainable entrepreneurship is all about..New sustainable economic production models are still required for sustainable entrepreneurship. The notion of longevity, ensuring long-lasting products, values, or services, is a common ground between entrepreneurship and sustainability: protecting current resources for future generations (sustainability) and producing distinctive long-term solutions (entrepreneurship).
The “GreenComp Enterprises” project aims to develop the skills and competences of entrepreneurs and startuppers in sustainable entrepreneurship, boosting them to create their sustainable enterprise, enhancing the production of eco-friendly products. This will be achieved by the creation of innovative learning materials and the implementation of hybrid trainings. Moreover, through individual mentoring, we will encourage startuppers to put into practice their eco-innovative idea. The learning materials will include all sectors of sustainable entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship, social sustainability, environmental sustainability), and through the expertise of the partners, the piloting of the materials, and the development of a digital tool for sustainable entrepreneurship learning, we expect to develop adult learning opportunities of high quality and accessible to a plethora of people.
E-SOCIAL – E-playing in Social Entrepreneurship
The project “E-playing in Social Entrepreneurship” aims to develop pedagogical techniques in social entrepreneurship through gamification, oriented to youth. The project will create innovative training materials in game-based social entrepreneurship education and will deliver serious video games which will help youngsters engage in learning the essentials of social entrepreneurship, by playing and interacting digitally with their peers. The games will be of scalable difficulty and will be free of charge, as part of a digital platform that will be created during the project.
The expected results of the project are:
• Identify the skills and competences needed by youth in the field of SE. Examples of targeted competences include (but not limited to):
o Consider sustainable alternatives to new purchases, such as reusing and recycling
o Aware that purchased goods or services might have different environmental and social impacts
o Factors one’s environmental, social and governance preferences in the decision to purchase a good or a service
o Knows the characteristics of various investment products including levels of risk, liquidity, expected performance and sustainability features or can find out easily
o Confident and motivated to compare the level of sustainability of investment products using for example other standards, labels, or ratings
o Aware of the rights of shareholders to influence the decisions of a company, including on its sustainability performance
• Create a tailor-made training course on sustainability and capacity building on SE
• Facilitate the creation of synergies between experts, organizations, SMEs, and other associations at a local, national, and European level.
SHAREN(E)ET – European Alliance to Develop disadvantaged groups soft skills
SHAREN(E)ET is a 30-months project which aim is to support inclusion and employment pathways, by creating a series of learning pathways (self-assessment and training offer). The self-assessment instrument will allow creating disadvantaged people’ self-awareness regarding their current levels of proficiency in key soft skills, and the training will cover the gaps and train disadvantaged groups on how to develop and value their soft skills. To the project purpose, it is required to design a participatory approach and to be as close to the beneficiaries as possible. Therefore, SHAREN(E)ET methodology will be based on delivering pilots simultaneously to a single group in each country. The development of the PR’s will also be almost in parallel, making sure the resources are working and taking advantage of synergies. The project will start with the planning of all the necessary PR’s, they will be detailed at the same time with a conjoint effort from all partners.
The project addresses a common European issue – the shortage of skilled and unskilled workers. Due to the demographic development in the past few years and in the years to come there is a substantial “hidden reserve” of people who would be able to work but for various reasons are not doing so. Through individual coaching, it is possible to activate and motivate these people, to help them recognize and overcome internal and external barriers, to work out perspectives with them and thus (re-)integrate them into the job market.
To fulfil this task there is a need for coaches who have professional and life experience and who can pass this on at eye level.
The objective of the CoCos project is to provide coaches and those who want to become coaches with the necessary tools, with methodological and factual knowledge and with the according skills to be able to work with clients, so that during their own professional development they can not only experience support in dealing with a clientele that is diverse in a number of aspects, but they can also learn new methods, come into contact with modern forms of learning and discover how these can be used in dealing with clients. Especially since “Coach” is not a protected or regulated job-title, the project, its activities, and results shall ensure that the coaches who participate get a formal recognition that their work meets high quality standards.
MOTIVE – Methodology for Online Training in Innovative Virtual Environment
MOTIVE is an Erasmus+ programme for Cooperation Partnerships in Vocational Education and Training. This action enables participating organisations to gain experience in international cooperation and to strengthen their capacities, but also to produce high-quality innovative deliverables.
The primary goal of Cooperation Partnerships is to allow organisations to increase the quality and relevance of their activities, to develop and reinforce their networks of partners, to increase their capacity to operate jointly at transnational level, boosting the internationalisation of their activities and through exchanging or developing new practices and methods as well as sharing and confronting ideas.
VRAR -Learn and work easy in Virtual and Augmented Reality
The VRAR Project, “Learn and work easy in Virtual and Augmented Reality”, works to support the career guidance of people who have lost their jobs or want to change their professional field, allowing them to embark on the world of modern technologies entering all fields of activity. Virtual and Augmented Reality are no longer a technology of the future used only for entertainment but an increasingly popular tool in science, education and medicine.
The main project goal is to develop a short training program in the field of Virtual and Augmented Reality. This will be implemented through a guideline methodology for job seekers and entrepreneurs in the field of Virtual and Augmented Reality, and a handbook and videos with instructions for working with the equipment used by professionals in the industry.
DIFILIM – Digital Financial Literacy for Microenterprises
The ultimate purpose of the DIFILIM Project is to contribute towards enhancing digital financial literacy/inclusion in certain European micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs and MSMEs).
The literature still has several unknowns regarding the factors and skillsets that contribute to
(i) viable entrepreneurial activity,
(ii) the incentives that can motivate informal attitudes to entrepreneurship to formalize, and
(iii) enterprises transforming to medium and large-scale enterprises.
Thus, this project attempts to cater to this gap, by examining the setting for European SMEs, the related skills that can foster latent and active entrepreneurial activity, the skillsets that are relevant to such activity, the awareness on novel financial instruments and tools by latent and current European entrepreneurs.
The following question is of paramount interest: Does digital financial literacy of the entrepreneur affect the firm’s well-being? The partners will identify digital and financial literacy needs and provide training to fill in this gap for both professional and unemployed people.
We aim at developing attractive, training programme in country language, that will allow digital financial literacy enhancement. The DIFILIM project seeks to deliver a curriculum to meet the real needs of entrepreneurs in the areas of financial literacy and digital skills.
During the two-year project, partners will carry out various research and development activities and face-to-face meetings with entrepreneurs.
SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS ACADEMY – ACADEMYINFLUENCERS
ACADEMY INFLUENCERS came into being under the European Union Year of the YOUTH 2022. The project involves young people in the achievement of new key competences on social media business with a balanced mix of vocational digital skills. We would like to contribute to innovation in vocational education and training and resort to e-learning via virtual learning environments, multimedia hardware and software and through social networking to help the participants to learn within the established times. We are sure that more and more young people will grasp the importance of using social media and create new jobs. It contributes to the mutual recognition of new qualifications across EU and learning outcomes in Europe facilitating to work closely with the new digital technologies and, of course, the creation of new jobs. Youth unemployment is significantly connected with less digital skills and this project is targeted at young people identifying innovative professions in the current and future labor market. Being a social media influencer is not a hobby but a concrete job in a competitive workplace. A real job is an activity when you get a certain occupation with activities and get paid for these activities. Therefore, social media influencers must amass a large audience, build connections over the time, add value to their followers’ lives, create vast contents of photos, videos, storytelling, creativity and new ideas, etc. Being a social media influencer is also a very difficult job, more so than most people think. The first step before all is to understand how to build a solid reputation around social media, study and work hard to learn the rules, social channels, how grow popularity, how to choose social media technology suited for their business needs, how to use the activity monitoring and how to plan & develop their own social marketing strategies. One of the reasons for social influencer marketing great success is because influencers have a targeted completed skill education and are responsive to the changes of market and digital instruments in the field of social media. It’s important to understand the basic types of social media content that can make the difference in the social work marketplace. Social Media is an evolving field and for the professional influencer is compulsory to understand the risks and the opportunities for success.
CRAFTING 50 & BEYOND: Digital enabler for older craftsmen’s businesses
Considering the characteristics of the craft sector, CRAFT50+ will work to understand the competences that craftsmen from different partner countries (Italy, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Belgium, Cyprus and Georgia) have and the activities they need to develop to make these activities more creative and digital. Taking advantage of the economic restructuring that the pandemic requires, the entire craft area will be worked on, understanding the cultural and legislative contexts of each country for these activities, and working directly with craftsmen to endow them with the business and technological skills needed to boost their business. At least 42 craftsmen will be involved in the project activities, following a co-construction methodology and 18 craftsmen will have the opportunity to participate in a blended mobility of learners. 230 stakeholders will be involved in multiplier events directly.
VR EDUCATION: IMPLEMENTATION OF VIRTUAL REALITY BASED LEARNING METHODOLOGY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Traditional teaching methods are focused on providing facts; however, having access to and consuming a lot of information isn’t learning. Being informed isn’t the same as being educated. Virtual Reality (VR) can motivate students towards academic achievement. By using of VR technology, teachers can attract the attention of students to developed VR education material and make studying process exciting and more effective. VR is on the doorstep of education, and without a doubt, it’ll change the world as we know it. New school classrooms will be technologically advanced places of learning, with VR technology, that will allow significantly increasing of students’ engagement and learning. The present limits can be notified in the lack of necessary IT equipment, as well as lack of teachers’ skills in ability of the underlying technology to customize the material on such way that it can be easier to implement VR material as a part of the class curriculum.