The partnership and objectives of the EXPECT-MORE project are setup in front of the followingProject background: Currently about 1.5 million asylum seekers have already entered the European member states and together with additional people arriving daily it is estimated that min. 1 million persons will receive the international protection status as refugee with immediate and full access to the labour markets of the European member states in the years 2016 and 2017. Since the competence backgrounds of people arriving in Europe are totally diverse and according to studies at least 25-30% of the persons do not even have a lower secondary school degree, this is a unpredictable challenge for labour market integration and also for the VET systems of the European countries. Providing full access and appropriate access to VET training and qualifications becomes a crucial issue in the next two years for this target group and this takes place in front of different VET systems, unknown backgrounds and competences (mainly acquired through informal learning) of persons accessing. Truly speaking none of the VET systems of the European countries and none of the European labour markets (which are currently struggling with high unemployment rates in general) are prepared for this challenge. Project objectives: 1) Exchange of practices, evaluation and transfer of good practices related to guidance and counselling approaches for refugees and migrants in Europe 2) Exchange of practices, evaluation and transfer of good practices related to C-VET programmes and didactics in C-VET for refugees and migrants in Europe 3) Exchange of practices, evaluation and transfer of good practices related to labour market integration and work experience programmes for regugees and migrants in Europe 4) Supporting the challenges of C-VET and labour market integration of refugees and migrants in the European members states by creating a forum for experience and good practice exchangeProject results: Desite the fact that the EXPECT-MORE project is built as an exchange of practices project, the partnership will develop the following core results and outputs: a) Good practice analysis matrix "future proof 2016ff", a matrix allowing to identify good practices in front of the most actual and recent challenges and criteria necessary for estimation of future proofness.b) 3 good practice collections with detailed good practices approaches for the three identfied support levels (guidance&counselling, C-VET programmes and didactics, labour market integration and work experience programmes)c) 3 learning, teaching and training events for each of the good practice collection to support and implement concrete transfer processes Project impact: The project impact is mainly directed towards the partner institutions as well as fellow or sister organisations in the partner countries and beyond who receive the possibility to exchange practices , learn from each other, analyse mutually the good practice approaches and are able to prepare for the challenge they will face in the next years. Moreover as final beneficiaries the project is additionally envisaging refugees and migrants as final participants and beneficaries of the implementation of good practice approaches in the partner countries as well as a group of wider stakeholders like policy makers, political decision makers, public organisations on local, regional and national level who are all so far not prepared for what will be happening on the labour markets in the next few years. Partnership: The partnership of the project consists of highly experienced organisations currently already dealing with refugee integration or at least integration disadvantaged persons, have access to a vast number of good practice approaches, will be able to analyse and evaluate good practices and finally implement a transfer process for selected instruments, practices or models
Due to the fact that in 2016 more than 1.5 million asylum seekers entered the European member states, estimated 1 million persons would receive the international protection status as refugee and therefore all of them would get full access to the labour markets of the European member states the EXPECT-MORE project was setup with the unpredictable challenge for labour market integration and also for the VET systems of the European countries. Since the competence backgrounds of people arriving in Europe were totally diverse full access and appropriate access to VET training and qualifications became a crucial issue at this point for this target group and this took place in front of different VET systems, unknown backgrounds and competences (mainly acquired through informal learning) of persons accessing. This challenging initial situation was considered in detail and the following objectives were defined for the EXPECT MORE project: 1) Exchange of practices, evaluation and transfer of good practices related to guidance and counselling approaches for refugees and migrants in Europe 2) Exchange of practices, evaluation and transfer of good practices related to C-VET programmes and didactics in C-VET for refugees and migrants in Europe 3) Exchange of practices, evaluation and transfer of good practices related to labour market integration and work experience programmes for regugees and migrants in Europe 4) Supporting the challenges of C-VET and labour market integration of refugees and migrants in the European members states by creating a forum for experience and good practice exchange The partnership for the EXPECT MORE project was established out of 7 well experinced organisations from 7 European countries (Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia, Italy, Hungary, Croatia) which were needed to allow for a broad basis of concepts and approaches, models and instruments for the three main objectives of the project: a) guidance and counselling b) C-VET programmes c) labour market integration and work place based learning The main activities and results of the EXPECT-MORE project were: a) Development of an evaluation and analysis matrix "Future Proof Matrix" - the core instrument for the exchange and transfer of practices related to the above mentioned three core interaction fields. Based on an in depth analysis of influencing factors for successful training and integration and latest research results from refugee groups appearing in Europe, the partnership elaborated an innovative evaluation matrix to rate projects. b) Collection of good practices - in this 3 collections out of each partner country approaches were presented, how integration within the 3 above mentioned topics can work, which instruments should be used and also which issues need to be considered. c) Learning/teaching/training activities - After the completion of each above mentioned 3 collections each time an learning, teaching and training event was implemented in 3 different European countries to present and evaluate the collected approaches. The best approach in each theme from each country was finally included in the Final Collection. d) Production of the final collection - In this collection the 3 best approaches from each topic and from each partner country were collected and prepared so that a simple transfer of approaches in the whole or parts of it are possible. e) Exchange and transfer - during a final transfer phase single good practice approaches or parts of it were implemented in partner countries for the benefit for the target group and supported by the project partnership. For the projects impact in general it can be said that a great deal of know-how has been exchanged through the various best-practice collections and that many partners have gained important ideas for further work in all three main areas mentioned above. Nevertheless, it must be said that this transfer was more difficult than expected, a) because of the difficult political developments in Slovakia in Hungary and partly also in Croatia and Slovenia, but also because b) all these actions are embedded in different legal frameworks, often have to be released or financed by public authorities and this is often not possible or usually takes a very long time. In any case, it is difficult to achieve short-term results through such a small project. But in principle every single partner has learned a lot, exchanged ideas (especially during the LTTAs), forged new plans and cooperations and gained a lot of valuable experience for their activities. The project partners identified good practices available in the partner countries and supported the transfer of good practices within the partnership and a wider stakeholder community to support the broad access