A European goal is to increase the percentage of adults in vocational trainings up to 15% (by 2020). Various strategies have been proposed in order to achieve these games, e.g. more support for employees in transitions, special offers for the unskilled, validation of knowledge acquired in informal situations and encouragement of women. All over the world it is mostly women who interrupt their vocational career in order to care for their children and family. After this career break many women find it difficult to find a new job because their knowledge is not up to date anymore; processes have changed and technologies have advanced. When finally reentering the workforce most of these women have to face the gender wage gap and discriminated against whenever it comes to promotions. The project restart 2.0 aims to facilitate the way back into the work force for women after maternity leave. In summary it will provide an online platform containing different content, e.g. Microsoft Office courses, management knowledge, an English course and the pass of competences, a tool developed to document the knowledge women acquired during their time at home (e.g. time management, organizational skills). To contribute these skills to a European level and to fulfill the needs of the labor market, we developed the module “intercultural competence” which facilitates international/European competences of methods, decision-making and responsibility. The module “Services“ completes the platform with support for questions about childcare and child support. Thanks to the platform the women can prepare for their return while still at home. They can autonomously organize their lesson which makes the program suitable for women with small children or other duties. All Modules of the platform are using low-level educational rudiments and methods with the ambition to provide a transparent learning-environment for un- and low-skilled women and therefor reaches the public at large. All modules correlate to the situation of women re-entering the job market to foster the virtual mobility, which is the basis of our information society, all offers of the project are optimized for mobile usage. The platform features an innovative open interactive module called “Wiki-Fem-Professional”, which will be integrated into the platform and offers the following capabilities: - Free access to all interested parties in Europe (woman re-entering the job-market, working woman, woman in parental leave…) - The possibility of entering job- or software-related information and learning content for all interested parties, following the example of online-lexica like “Wikipedia” - The possibility of subject-specific on- and offline communication for all interested parties, following the example of social media Therefor Wiki-Fem-Professional is a unique European platform for women re-entering the job market and working women, which will be enhanced continuously by the attendance‘s input and provides job-related solutions European-wide. Owing to the open and free access the usage is open to the public at large and therefore provides information about the situation in the different European countries (Competences, problems of women re-entering the job, needs of the employers,…). This means not only for the participants an additional benefit, it also provides information for political decisions to improve the perspectives of returning. Therefor and because of the interactive European-wide and long-term advantage after the projects end, and through the wide spread of the content, the project meets the demand of sustainability in a special way. The project will be run by the European partners United Kingdom, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands and Germany, who all have longtime experiences in vocational assistance and training of women. Through the wide diversity of the partner‘s competences (e.g. management-, ICT- or training competences), they complement each other concerning the project-contents and –aims. Die Zusammenarbeit ermöglicht den konstanten Austausch der besten Methoden und Erfahrungen und garantiert damit die Weiterentwicklung des Projektes und die damit verbundenen Ergebnisse in den einzelnen teilnehmenden Ländern. The cooperation allows the constant exchange of the best methods and experiences and guarantees the further development of the project and therefor the related results in each single participating country.
The project Re-Start Women 2.0 aims to facilitate the return of women to the working life after family leave. At present, still mainly women make a break in their careers to care for the children. After this professional interruption, it is often difficult for these women to re-enter the labour market and find a suitable job, which is partly caused by a lack of up to date professional knowledge. The e-learning platform, which was developed further, translated and transferred in the course of this project, can already be used during family leave and thus contributes to these women proactively addressing their knowledge gaps regarding updated professional skills. This contributes to a reduction of the duration of the break in their careers as they can earlier return to working life as qualified employees. In the context of this project, an e-learning platform containing learning contents relevant for a professional re-entrance was expanded by further modules, translated into the languages of the partner countries and the contents were enriched with regards to country-specific requirements. The e-learning platform is now available to women who want to prepare their return to a job, many institutions as e.g. education providers, equal opportunities representatives and political, economic and labour market representatives. The platform includes learning contents covering the topics office/administration, management, communication, intercultural competences, ICT and the Competence pass, which documents the informally acquired skills gained during parental leave. In addition, the element Wiki-Fem Professional was developed, a module for interactive European exchange of information and experiences. For all interested parties, Wiki-Fem Professional provides the opportunity to upload, share and use professional, practical and application-specific information and learning contents. Thus, it contributes to a professional as well as generic communication between the women and other users as well as to a constant further development and update of the platform. The contents of the “services” module and the uploaded information lead to an accessibility of practical professional solutions and information throughout Europe. This information is valuable to create a better understanding of the situation women face when returning to working life (challenges, requirements of employers, necessary competences) in the different countries, as well to politically improve the professional perspectives of women returning to working life. User-friendliness and contents of the whole platform were tested during two rounds (each) of pilot courses in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, which led to further improvement of the platform. Due to Europe-wide and interactive use of the e-learning platform beyond the end of the project as well as the opening of the platform to the public (creating a publicly available educational resource), the project is very sustainable. Advantages of this Europe-wide available e-learning offer are the omission of the journey to the training location and the opportunity to flexibly and autonomously assign time to the online training, which makes it suitable also for mothers of small children or women living in rural areas. In all modules, low-threshold pedagogical approaches were used aiming to create a transparent learning environment also for women with no or little previous knowledge. Furthermore, all modules are holistic, integrating the life situation of women returning to the workforce into the formulation of exercises, thus facilitating the application of the new knowledge. To promote the virtual mobility, which is a requirement in today’s professional life, the platform was optimised for mobile devices. By reaching out to a large target group, the project results can make a contribution to reach the aim of the European Union to increase the percentage of adults in vocational education to 15% as women are supported when refreshing their skills.