The “What Really Matters” project will address core issues related with the ability and motivation of High School and University graduates to gain employment either by finding a job or by creating the opportunities themselves through entrepreneurship. The objectives of the project during its three years of implementation are to: 1. Develop new innovative approaches to increase the quality and the relevance of the educational offer to graduates as well as to youth workers. 2. Provide personalized support, collaborative learning, critical thinking, open educational resources, virtual mobility and other innovative learning methods to graduates and youth workers. 3. Stimulate entrepreneurial culture (including social entrepreneurship) to develop active citizenship and employability. 4. Increase employability through active career counseling and support services. 5. Promote a culture of inter sectorial and international collaboration. The project will be promoted by 7 Strategic Partners from Romania, Cyprus, Hungaria and Turkey and will focus on the needs of the unemployed youth in the countries of the participating organizations aiming to improve the quality and accessibility of educational and training provisions through the use of ICT as well as to provide new skills for gaining long term employment and for entrepreneurship. “What Really Matters” will also address the needs of youth workers (training and career counselors) by providing instruments to facilitate the delivery and accessibility of qualitative services through the development of relevant and innovative content. The development of relevant and innovative e-learning content as well as ICT can help to meet the needs of the target groups and to facilitate the delivery of qualitative guidance and training provisions. Additionally, it will assist the creation and maintenance of networks involving all the actors of the training chain (policy makers, VET systems operators, young unemployed seeking for jobs, young entrepreneurs) at local, national and European level. When first results such as Study on young unemployment and Handbook on vocational counseling, the project website OER will be launched, 1000 leaflets will be printed and distributed, and the project will be presented in at least one international conference on topics. Once the Study on young employment and Handbook on vocational counseling will be finished and uploaded on OER, they will be printed in full version, presented and distributed at local stakeholders and at least at one large international conference on relevant topics. Last but not least, we will promote our 6 On-line courses on national and international educational markets, in order to train 180 career counseling practitioners. This 6 online courses will teach practitioners the basic of career coaching, including the definition of career coaching, the ethics, how to find clients, how to assess client needs, matching a client to their true calling, improving the work life of a client, helping clients find new careers, using road maps, uncovering client motivation, client branding strategies, interview advice, negotiating for a better benefits package, teaching a client to be successful in the long term, and how to ensure career coaching career success. These career coaching lessons will include checklists, examples, and clearly outlined steps to ensuring a career coach is ready for any client and any situation. By learning the basics of coaching, practitioners will be able to start their own career coaching business, helping others find the work which truly sustains them – while also helping their own career goals. From the basics of finding clients, to helping them, and to insuring their success, this career coach course offers a self-paced, self-study opportunity to become a career coach who guides clients to their true vocation or just to a happier work life. All our Intellectual outputs will empower us to successfully organize 6 Career Days, summing 180 beneficiary young graduates of High school and College. Call for participating will be publicized in the local press of each Partner. We will gather efforts in bringing at least 5 employers to recruit beneficiary for their vacancies and we will organize workshops for preparing our 180 beneficiary to apply for jobs. Schedule of Career Days will be discussed and planned with at least three month earlier. In the end of our project we will organize an International Conference on Vocational Counseling in Arad, which will gather 100 national and 10 international specialists in the field of career counseling and youth work. By creating this opportunity we expect presenting all our intellectual outputs as well as studies on young employment. This conference will gather experience of project team, collaborators, stakeholders and not only and will publish (printed and online on OER) a Brochure of best practices and finding in the field of youth employment challenges.
“What Really Matters” 2014-1-RO01-KA202-002863 project has address core issues related with the ability and motivation of University graduates to gain employment by finding a job in the area of their specialization. The objectives of the project during its two years of implementation were to: 1. Develop new innovative approaches to increase the quality and the relevance of the educational offer to graduates as well as to youth workers: OER, Handbook, online training course, Career Days and International conference; 2. Provide personalized support, collaborative learning, critical thinking, open educational resources, virtual mobility and other innovative learning methods to graduates and youth workers: OER, online training course; 3. Stimulate employability: 6 Career Days type events; 4. Increase employability through active career counseling and support services: 6 Career Days type events; 5. Promote a culture of inter sectorial and international collaboration: OER and International Conference. The project was promoted by 7 Strategic Partners from Romania, Cyprus, Hungary and Turkey and focused on the needs of the unemployed youth in the countries of the participating organizations aiming to improve the quality and accessibility of educational and training provisions through the use of ICT as well as to provide new skills for gaining long term employment and for entrepreneurship. “What Really Matters” also addressed the needs of youth workers (training and career counselors) by providing instruments to facilitate the delivery and accessibility of qualitative services through the development of relevant and innovative content: online training courses and OER. The development of relevant and innovative e-learning content of the 6 online training courses (270 participants) as well as ICT helped meet the needs of the target groups and facilitated the delivery of qualitative guidance and training provisions. The study on young unemployment (Research O2): the main objective of this study is to reflect the reality of youth vocational counseling needs. These conclusions represent the starting point in elaborating project’s Handbook on Vocational Counselling dedicated to youth workers, career counselors, trainers and educators. The aim of this questionnaire is to point out young people’s identification of vocational counseling needs, unemployment statistics, relevant competencies on the labor market, and current knowledge on active national policies in offering employment opportunities for young people. A total of 432 youth have voluntarily responded to our online questionnaire in four languages, available for freely dissemination on project’s webpage http://wrmcloud.eu/forms/. These results prove that youth is keen to knowledge and information about labor market that encourages their lucrative initiatives, thus there is an urgent need for developing a virtual community that gathers and freely disseminates such information about internships, apprenticeship and traineeship programs in companies at local, regional and European level. Handbook on Vocational Counselling consists of 6 Chapters: Self-assessment, Opportunities awareness, Taking decisions, Transition planning, Career Management and Entrepreneurship. It is structured in 244 pages, written in English. All Partners except X-House were involved in the activity of designing the structure and elaborating resource materials for a period of 7 months. The Handbook was edited under Eikon Publishing House in December 2015, and printed and multiplied in 30 exemplars. Each Country has received 10 exemplars, which will consist own vocational counselling Methodology. OER on Vocational counselling www.wrmcloud.eu: Projects' OER (open education resources) represents a website that long term and freely disseminates all Intellectual Outputs of the project O2 and O4, as well as Monthly Newsletters/News, educational resources for youth workers, vocational counsellors and trainers and employment resources for young people, by the end of the project. During Sept 2014 and Oct 2015, the OER was designed by X-HO. Currently the OER - O3 is active and freely disseminates milestones activities and main conclusions of the project's IO in order to freely disseminate best practices in the field of vocational education as seen by our strategic partnership. All our Intellectual outputs have empowered us to successfully organize 6 Career Days, summing 180 beneficiary young graduates and last yeas University students. The objective of this event was to disseminate project’s intellectual outputs and to implement the methodology developed under this project. In the end of our project we have organized an International Conference on Vocational Counseling in Arad 22-24 June 2016, which has gathered 100 national and 10 international specialists in the field of career counseling and youth work. By creating this opportunity we had received positive feedback on our entire intellectual outputs.