The framework of the CAPQI Project has mainly focused on the field of internships. This increasingly frequent activity among our young people, has an important relevance in Europe both for the young people themselves, as for the companies, organizations and in general any entity that welcomes them. However, in the development of the same, different problems are detected where some of them have been addressed in this project. It is well known that the remuneration of the practices is one of the main claims of young people. However, there are more indicators to be considered in order to measure the quality of an internship. The CAPQI project has identified some of the most important ones and has created a new environment to measure the quality of the practices based on the opinions of the trainees / internships. Thus, under the scope of the project, a new free access tool (www.transparencyatwork.org) has been developed, which allows young people to evaluate the quality of their practices. On the other hand, this tool shows this information in a sorted, transparent and orderly way. Based on a set of indicators grouped into 6 large blocks (remuneration, offer and contract, learning project, supervision of practices, work environment and career development) a global score of 0 to 5 is shown for each of the companies evaluated. The project has not intended at any time to be a portal for internship offers because there are other specific initiatives already available. However, in order to give greater visibility to the evaluations of practices and opinions, a Widget has been developed that allows such information to be included in any web page. All the information of the developed Widget, installation and use can be downloaded from https://github.com/esn-org/capqidemo. This project has been composed by 7 partners from Portugal (Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto), Belgium (Erasmus Student Network), France (InternsGoPro), Luxembourg (Erasmus University Foundation), Germany (Inter-Research and Fulda University) under the coordination of the University of Alcalá (Spain). The main spirit of the Consortium has been the sought of the quality of internships in companies. For this, two recommendations guides have been developed. The first one is aimed at employers providing different suggestions in the search of the quality of the practices from the business/company perspective (this guide has constituted the Intellectual Output 4). On the other hand, within the Intellectual Output 6, a series of recommendations based on European legislation and initiatives have been created for the different stakeholders involved in policies related to internships. All this information is accessible within the project website (www.capqi-project.eu). Other relevant issue to be mentioned has been the wide diffusion that the project has had through different initiatives beyond those initially established. The project has been presented globally or partially in conferences of the relevant educational sector such as EAIE'2017 or ERACON'2018 or through Multiplier Events. Initially the project included two (one in the first year of the project and another at the end). The first of them presented the developed tool being the recipients mainly Universities and Human Resources Services where the practices in companies could be a priority for them. The second was used to present the general conclusions of the project and as a stage for debate at European level with the participation of a Member of European Parliament, members of the DG of employment of the European Commission, universities, companies and youth associations. A global overview of the current status from a legal perspective was done among these different actors linked with the internship framework. Additionally, three other multiplier events that presented the CAPQI project to different agents linked to the work environment of the project were developed. Specific actors like Student Unions, youth associations or National Universities were met in these non-programmed events at the beginning of the project. By way of summary, we want to show some indicators linked to the project: up to February 2019 there have been about 1200 evaluations of practices in companies in the developed platform, the number of people who have attended to the conferences where the project has been disseminated reaches more than 80 and the total number of people who have attended to some Multiplier Event amounts to more than 150. These are interesting figures for a short-term project such as CAPQI, but not enough to improve the quality of the practices in all the entities that host young people for an internship.
1. CONTEXTInternships play a key role for young people’s integration into the labour market. They are essential in bridging the skills gap between education and work. However, the great majority of internships do not fulfil their purpose. According to a Eurobarometer study, out of 4,5 million students and graduates doing an internship each year in Europe, 59% are unpaid, 40% work without a contract and 30% have no learning content (Source: Flash Eurobarometer 278, November 2014). This results in an appalling situation where millions of young people face serious problems of social inequality and access to internships, no protection of rights and no acquisition of the skills necessary to get a job. No tools exist yet to identify and guarantee a quality internship. 2. OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT & LONG TERM BENEFITSThe aim of this Erasmus+ project is to develop tools that create transparency on the internship conditions within companies in Europe. The expected long term benefits for students are the following: help students a) avoid bad internships with low learning content and poor skill development and b) find employers that offer quality internships. The high visibility of their internship programs and the reputation at stake will incentivize employers to invest more in quality internships. This will contribute to increase the overall quality of internships in Europe. Thanks to the digital tools we develop, we intend to empower and connect the entities acting as an intermediary between the internship provider and the intern (youth-led NGOs and universities) to provide better services and security for young people. With the intended employer guide for quality internships, we intend to develop a guideline to help employers improve their internships. 3. OUR APPROACH & THE RESULT OF THE PROJECTTo reach our goals we intend to optimize and create digital tools that allow users to generate and publish large amounts of data on the internship condition within companies throughout Europe. This data will help young people assess the quality of the internship BEFORE applying. InternsGoPro developed a prototype rating system and a label to certify employers that offer quality internships. We will develop an open source plugin software enabling us to connect the information produced by the rating system, listing of labelled companies and potentially internship offers to any youth-led jobsites, university intranet or career services in Europe.4. BACKGROUND OF PARTICIPANTSThe consortium consists of 7 partner organisation from 5 countries: UAH (Spain), ESN (Belgium), AIESEC (Netherlands), InternsGoPro (Belgium), PRAXIS represented by ISEP Porto (Portugal), Inter-research (Germany), Fulda University (Germany) and EUF (Luxembourg). The partners all focus on improving the integration of young people into the labour market. At least 3 have a strong focus on quality internships. The competencies of the partners complement each other in the project. 5. THE ACTIONS TO REACH OUR GOALAction 1: Review existing initiatives to promote quality internships and develop a set of criteria to assess the quality of an internship program within a company in Europe. Action 2: Upgrade and update the prototype rating system that InternsGoPro developed based on the results from action 1. Action 3: Develop the technical infrastructure (plugin & API) that connects the InternsGoPro database of ratings and labelled employers with web sites that display internship and job offers. Action 4: Develop an employers guide for quality internships, guiding them on how to implement quality internships. Action 5: Organise a dissemination campaign of the tools to connect more platforms and generate more data from users.Action 6: Carry out capacity building activities to empower youth workers of the connected platform to use all the tools (such as the European certification scheme and statistical software).