Context The Europe 2020 Strategy has defined among others, one key priority that is to raise "Europe’s employment rate – more and better jobs, especially for women, young people and older workers" so to achieve a benchmark of " 75% employment rate for women and men aged 20-64 by 2020– achieved by getting more people into work, especially women, the young, older and low-skilled people and legal migrants". The achievement of this important goal, that has important implication for the more general objectives of at least 4 of the five headline targets that have been set for the EU to achieve by the end of 2020 as employment; research and development; education; social inclusion and poverty reduction, is threatened by the economic crisis and the consequent loss of job opportunities that in many countries lead the unemployment rates to achieve "record" percentages starting from 15% (Italy) up to more than 20% (Spain) just to quote two important examples. The Erasmus + Programme and the 2015 Call for proposals identifies important priorities to be addressed as to as to solve these issues, among which of great importance is dedicated to: - reinforcing the capacity of the VET systems to answer to the needs of the Job market and of the enterprises, and to create synergic cooperation and processes as confirmed by the Erasmus+ objective "improve the level of key competences and skills, with particular regard to their relevance for the labour market" - promoting the development of transversal skills and entrepreneurial spirit among students as confirmed by the Agenda for new skills and new jobs "helping people acquire new skills, adapt to a changing labour market and make successful career shift" The project partners have identify 3 main needs: -VET teachers need to acquire the skills to train their students on the aware use of Social Media to find job opportunities and develop their entrepreneurial spirit - Companies need to improve the use of social media for promoting their brands - The need to establish a cooperation between enterprises and the VET system in order to ameliorate the matching of job offer and demand, the visibility of companies and to promote youngsters employability To answer to these 3 main needs the YEES project intends to create a synergic effort among VET institutions and companies to explore how a correct and effective use of Social media can ensure a mutual benefit for students and companies. Aim The aim of the YEES project is to foster cooperation between the Vocational Education Systems and the world of work to promote the inclusion of youngsters in the labour market in an effective way using social media and crowdsourcing based tools. Activities The project partners will create the contents of 2 Guides -Guide 1 on professional profiles, curriculum creation, employment portals, social media resources, advices for teachers on how to train their students on web reputation related issues and adapt them to the context of each partner countries -Guide 2 focused on the creation and promotion of e-companies through the effective use of social media. This guide will also include a collection of teaching resources about social media technologies that are relevant for the promotion of employment. -Using the guides project partners will develop a MOOC course (massive open online course) for teachers, students and skateholders. The course will be upload to the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia platform for visibility and accesibility. Consortium The project will involve 9 institutions of 4 different European countries. The partnership is composed by institutions with experience in the development of innovative projects for VET schools and by institutions representing the interests of companies. Outcomes - The two Guides created to the needs of the target groups. - Testing of the updated Guides by VET teachers and companies’ human resources managers, comunity managers in order to make them acquire the skills to exploit the full potential of web social media for matching job offer and request. - Using Crowdsourcing approach for collaborative learn - MOOC Course in the UPV platform - Insertion of the YEES project results into the European VET systems Impact. People involved in the project. -200 VET Teachers and trainers -40 professionals in the field of the recruitment of employees or comunity managers -40 Enterprises -4000 VET students
Context The Europe 2020 Strategy has defined among others, one key priority that is to raise "Europe’s employment rate – more and better jobs, especially for women, young people and older workers" so to achieve a benchmark of " 75% employment rate for women and men aged 20-64 by 2020 – achieved by getting more people into work, especially women, the young, older and low-skilled people and legal migrants". The achievement of this important goal, that has important implication for the more general objectives of at least 4 of the five headline targets that have been set for the EU to achieve by the end of 2020 as employment; research and development; education; social inclusion and poverty reduction. The project partners identified 3 main needs: -VET teachers need to acquire the skills to train their students on the aware use of Social Media to find job opportunities and develop their entrepreneurial spirit; -companies need to improve the use of social media for promoting their brands -To foster a cooperation between the enterprises and the VET system in order to ameliorate the matching of job offer and demand, the visibility of companies and to promote youngsters employability Objectives The aim of the YEES project is to foster cooperation between the Vocational Education Systems and the world of work to promote the inclusion of youngsters in the labour market in an effective way using social media and crowdsourcing based tools. Participating organisations The YEES project involved: -9 contractual partners of 4 different European countries, including institutions with experience in the development of innovative projects for VET schools and by institutions representing the interests of companies; -30 schools (mainly vocational); -30 companies; -more than 200 teachers of all subjects; -around 4.500 students; -30 companies; -more than 40 associated partners including associations, education centres, business associations, public authorities, Universities. Activities The project’s main activities and related results and impact are: Activity 1) Guides for Teachers and Trainers The project partners created the contents of 2 Guides to be used by VET teachers and trainers with their students to guide them on how to exploit social media and the web through step by step guidelines on selected social media tools available on the net, how to create a good digital reputation for employment as potential employee or like young entrepreneur, on how to promote a company Brand through the web and the social media. Activity 2) Adopt an enterprise – Crowdsourcing practical experience The project partners developed the “Adopt an enterprise – Crowdsourcing experience”. The Crowdsourcing is a production model that utilizes the latest labour-collective work to develop products or solutions to a given problem. Through the “Adopt an enterprise" experience, students, companies and teachers, duly guided by the partners, developed the brand image of a real enterprise in each country according to a transnational approach. In each partner country, the actors involved in the national crowdsourcing experience were the following: an enterprise, whose digital identity had to be developed, represented by its CEO; 4 teachers in representation of the project partners’ countries: Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain; 4 classrooms in which the above mentioned teachers usually have classes; 1 representative for each contractual partner. Activity 3) MOOC based training course "Social media for new jobs" Starting from the contents and the materials of the Guides, the project partners developed an e-learning based training package addressed to VET teachers, students and company managers. The course is organized in 3 modules: -Personal Digital Identity -Digital Identity for Companies -Monitoring of Changes in the Labour Market Each module is organized in chapters and each chapter includes+ a video lesson, a multiple choice questionnaire and a proposal of individual and collaborative activities for students. The MOOCis available in English, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The total duration of the courses is about 30 hours. Activity 4) YEES portal The YEES Portal makes available all the main project outputs produced within the project and is organised in Sections. In addition, each section’ contents are duly introduced, providing to the user all the necessary information and guidance on how to access and exploit the contents. Impact As far as the impact of the project is concerned, the YEES project provided: -the VET teachers with the suitable skills on how to train their students on web reputation related issues; -the students with a specific guidance on how to use Social Media to find job opportunities and to develop their entrepreneurial spirit; -the companies with tailorised tools on how improve the use of social media for promoting their brands.