The project "SYCAS" Start Your Career At School - Young entrepreneurs : learning to create and innovate your own career deals with the wide variety of opportunities young people in Europe have for their future and their careers after finishing school. At present, young people living in Europe have many different opportunities to organize their lives and to realize their wishes and plans for the future. Nevertheless, they do not always accomplish their ideas. At school chances are often missed to put students´ ideas of the furutre world of work in concrete terms. Therefor, as ists essentrial goal, the project "SYCAS" Start Your Career At School aims at the purposeful and active preparation of students for their lives after school. Taking the expactations and the opportunities for the future education after schoo as a starting point and judging the aims of life of young people; subject matters, syllabi, as well as projects and activities at school will be recorded and it will be evaluated to what extent they meet these requirements. In the exchange of experiences with the partner schools from Poland, Italy, Finland, Greece and the Republic of Ireland we are expecting the comparison of practical experience, discussions and the developpment of new ideas. The central methodology is based on the principle `students teach students`. Thus, sutdents become active in recording offers and demands as well as the preparation for their further education at school, so that they can inform their class mates and their partners of the participating schools about their findings. We are striving for full information about chances in training and education in Europe. The results are prepared and mediated by students for students. Students are expected to concern themselves more self-confident, motivated and competent with their future in Europe. In the long term this project should help to establish and extend close collaboration with training centers, firms, as well as etrepreneurs in the regions of the participating schools. The results, findings and methods of the project will be adapted and presented on the internet, so that learners and teachers of the partner schools can gain benefit from the research.
“Students teach students” has been the central methodology of our project. Students of all the participating countries have prepared a PowerPoint presentation of their hometown, school, country and education system which were presented to the students and teachers of every participating school and even to the local community. After the mobilities, participating students taught other students about their experiences and results. Both activities have increased their self-confidence as well as their understanding and awareness of cultural differences within Europe. The students who were more proficient in IT skills taught the other students how to navigate the SYCAS website, video editing skills and creation of the PowerPoint presentations. The hosting students became guides for the visiting partners around their schools, local areas and major cities. They taught each other the history, traditions, language, music, dance, sport and typical dishes in their country. The students formulated a questionnaire to find out if the school satisfied the students` needs for knowledge about future careers and study opportunities. A student representative from the project visited the other classes and explained the questionnaire and why the information was valuable to the project. The results for this questionnaire were collected and analysed by the students and the data was compared between the countries. The results showed us that the students have very different ideas of their future lives depending on the country they come from. These results are uploaded and can be viewed on the E-twinning platform of the project. Students had access to a wide variety of career opportunities. They saw various career paths such as Media, Arts, Crafts, Communications, Administration, Outdoor Maintenance, Food Processing, Entrepreneurship, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), Environment, Pharmacy, Commerce and Catering. During the meetings they were able to actively participate in various workshops which benefitted them greatly. The students have the confidence and ability to use different languages and now they feel more comfortable to move around Europe as true European citizens. The students are now looking at study and career opportunities not only in their own country but in Europe. Thus, students are increasing their employability. During the project they have visited many universities, companies and firms in the six different countries involved in this project. These visits provided students with an insight into the possibilities of furthering their education or working life throughout Europe. In Germany, students from other countries informed the partners of positive and negative aspects of studying abroad. In Ireland, past students explained how they transitioned to University from school through the preparation the school had provided for them. In Finland, the students visited a University of Applied Sciences and gained an insight into the gaming industry and the world of virtual reality. In Greece, they visited the university and were given the opportunity to see the long history (2000 years) of education and the roots of European civilisation. In Poland, students presented what each school has to offer for working life. In Italy, a past pupil who is involved in arts and culture, shared his experiences with the students about working in this field. On several occasions the students have been exposed to very creative people who have spoken about entrepreneurship, creativity, imagination and self-motivation as a tool for a future career. We have also visited many firms or companies that have originated from a very creative idea and these people have explained their pathways to success to our students. This showed the many routes that can lead to your goals. E.g. Ikea, Microsoft, Kedrion, Ponsse, Sputnik. All schools have established close collaboration with training centres, firms and entrepreneurs in their regions. This helps students to understand what they want to do in their future while they are still at school and therefore increases their self-confidence and motivation about their own futures. The results from the project are available in a number of online platforms such as: SYCAS website, E – twinning and individual school websites. In addition to this, facebook, twitter and online newspapers were also used by some schools. Online radio interviews also took place. Although the original idea was to create a booklet with detailed results of the project, after some discussion, we decided to change this to a website. We felt that it would be more sustainable for the future and relevant to the students`everyday lives.