Due to the economic crisis it is often very difficult for young students to find a good internship, and this is even more difficult for vulnerable students. However, internships are essential for all VET-students and the effects of the impossibility to find a good internship are disastrous. If the student fails to find an internship, or doesn't successfully complete it, it not only hinders his VET-development and leads to higher rates of early school leaving so-called “drop-outs”, but also stops their transition to the labor market. A successful internship is therefore of great importance. In addition, unemployed (vulnerable) youngster even have more difficulty in finding their way to the labor market. Correct guidance and counseling of both youngsters and corporates is necessary to create a positive stance for reintegration. The current instruments and existing approaches in guiding and supporting (vulnerable) VET-students and unemployed young people in the various countries are inadequate. Due to budget cuts in various countries, there are almost no resources left to develop instruments to support internships or reintegration programs. Neither on the side of the school, nor with employers. Therefore the knowledge level to support vulnerable people in an adequate, qualitive way is very poor. More instruments need to be developed and made available. The actual available instruments focus mainly on one of the target groups (students or the school). So, there is a need to develop a coherent framework to support all parties involved. The current approach for an internship is mainly supply-driven and focuses on placing the individual person and therefore does not lead to a structural demand on the employers side. Often school and work are seen as two different worlds, but this should start functioning more as one unit, because schools and employers need each other to prepare future employees for the labor market. Innovative programs as proposed in this project will promote the transition from school to work and support student, school and employer. Furthermore, the corporate world should be made aware that corporate social responsability requires inclusion of weaker social groups. A better knowledge of the principles of diversity management will certainly help in creating this awareness. Transnational cooperation in the EU is necessary to exchange experiences, successes, failures and barriers and to find structural solutions for this shared problem. This is a more cost effective/efficient way of working in which new methods can be developed, tested and implemented transnationally. The goal is to create a European innovative infrastructure for (vulnerable) VET-students/young unemployed people and support them in getting the same chances/opportunities in the regular labor market. The key objectives of the DME project are: - Establish partnerships/network models between schools and employers; - Improving job opportunities for (vulnerable) VET-students and unemployed young people, including more high quality internships for (vulnerable) young people; - Improve the preparation of employers and support them to generate more internships with a good result; - Develop a transnational framework/methodology (incl. tools, procedures, good practices, information and a manual) to support (vulnerable) students, schools and employers to create successful internships; - Make the framework/methodology easy applicable and available for all target groups; - Develop leadership and diversity management at the school staff to lead and guide (vulnerable) students during training; - Develop diversity management (skills) of employers; - The transfer of knowledge and adaptation of diversity management tools and methodologies; - Deepening the importance of diversity management for HR on a larger scale; - Reducing internship failure and early-school leaving/drop-out rate; - Make internships more attractive to employers; - Increase a more suitable and realistic image of (vulnerable) students. The ultimate goal is to research whether diversity cells in each partner country based on the DME methodology can add value. These cells should be able to give permanent support and counsel to local employers/policy makers. This will ultimately result in abolishing the distance to the labor market for the target groups of this project.
Generally speaking, we can say that the project had one main objective that we wanted to achieve. This main objective was to increase the chances for employment through a labour contract or through internships for youngsters with a distance to the labour market. It’s important to know that we had worked towards an integral approach of three actors: the youngsters themselves, the employers and the intermediary partners (schools, job coaches, etc.). Through this project we had succeeded in establishing a system whereby these actors were actively engaged with each other, with the result that youngsters had been guided to labour in the try-outs. But even more important was that a framework had been created for the three actors where they could rely on in the future through concrete tools. In order to achieve this main objective, we had made several sub-objectives: 1.Mapping the policy, the support and the specific legislation for each partner country. These findings were discussed by the project partners in project meetings and in a final report available (on the website) for policy makers at local and European level. The report will not be able to give immediate solutions, but gives policy makers stuff to think about. Result : report with tools, good practices, legal framework per country and some basic conclusions 2.Developing a theoretical model of Diversity Management that empowers employers to support and recruit youngsters with a distance to the labour market. Result : DME Handbook for Diversity Management (a practical tool voor employers who want to hire people with a distance to the labour market) 3.Collecting concrete tools/training used in different countries and which can support this model. These tools were written in a procedure so that they also could be used in the other partner countries (exchange of knowledge and know-how) Result : 25 procedures were written and collected on the project website http://www.projectdme.eu/hr_procedures.php http://www.projectdme.eu/training.php http://www.projectdme.eu/tools.php 4.Within the project, five new tools were also developed which are directly applicable by employers, youngsters and schools (coaches) Result : 5 new tools were developed https://www.dmecognition.eu https://dmequickscan.eu https://hrcareertool.eu/ https://www.dmescale2skill.eu https://www.supportmyinternship.eu 5.In a try-out version, these tools were tested and optimized. This try-out had direct impact on employers and youngsters and in some cases also a direct impact on the recruitment of youngsters. Result : In total we directly reached 307 youngsters with a distance to the labour and 261 people from the intermediary groups (schools, job coaches, etc.) with the try-outs. We also set up diversity management actions in 72 companies. 6.To broaden the number of users of this methodology and tools, the theoretical model and the associated tools were spread through the site and other media channels, with the aim of deploying it as widely as possible across the EU. 7.Finally, also good practices were collected in each partner country. The aim was to sensitize and motivate the actors. It must also inspire policy makers to look at and implement initiatives from other countries. Result : We put 26 good practices on the project website All the tools and information will be available for free via the DME website. In that way, it must be possible for companies, schools, coaches, ... to work on diversity management in the future and to give them the opportunity to employ people with a distance to the labor market.