Our European society is currently dealing with a multitude of problems : intolerance, disengagement, radicalisation and economic exclusion are on the rise. These problems are strengthened by feelings of disillusionment and in some cases a lack of perspective. One of the causes is the inability of many people, especially young people, to find suitable jobs or even any job at all. Many people are confronted with unemployment or are overqualified for the jobs they hold.Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity (CIGS) are small-scale initiatives set up by private citizens in the Global North on a volunteer basis. These small organisations are engaged in improving the living standards of people in the Global South, or dealing with global issues in the North. It is estimated that in Europe there are more than 200 thousand such organisations. People working on a volunteer basis in CIGS gain a valuable set of new skills and capacities, such as in management, language, negotiation, organisation, communication and many more. These skills and capacities are not formally assessed and rarely recognized. Should these skills and capacities be fully recognised they can contribute to the employability of the people who obtain them.The Global STEPS project therefore aims at providing evidence of the added value of global citizenship experience for skills development, facilitating recognition of key competencies developed through global citizenship experience and through this recognition, improved access to quality employment. The project intends to reinforce the positive effect of active global citizenship outside of formal education by raising self-awareness about the competencies people acquire in their global citizenship practices and helping to translate those into saleable skills.The project does so by creating a common understanding of what Global Citizenship entails amongst the 4 partners working in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Close links will be identified in the process with the European Key Competence Framework. With this, the partners will start developing a methodology that enables the identification and qualification of non-formal skills and competencies. A competence builder tool will be generated, and a model item will be developed to introduce into CVs/application forms which will also be applicable to the Europass CV. A certificate will acknowledge the process of acquiring competencies through Global Citizenship experiences. These tools and methodologies will be made accessible through an online interactive platform accessible in the 4 countries that enables participants to assess their current level of non formal skills and find new opportunities to improve their skills and competencies. In order to guarantee that the tools are relevant and well used, guidelines and training will be developed and delivered so that other stakeholder organisations are able to use them. Through development of the tools and platforms, more than 450 people will benefit from the project directly while 50.000 will be reached through dissemination events and other project activities.The project will be evaluated with the outcome mapping method, enabling partners, beneficiaries and CIGS to make assessments at the start and at the end of the project on those aspects and impacts of the project we consider essential. The ultimate and sustainable project product will be a methodology to enable people to assess how their Global Citizenship experiences can improve their skills over time. This platform will be available online in all 4 countries and can be further expanded into other European countries.
* Context To cope with current challenges (climate change, water shortages, loss of biodiversity, economic, political and social crises, etc.), adaptation processes and innovation are becoming more dynamic and complex. This brings new challenges for the job market: to succeed professionally, economic actors will have to solve problems that we can not foresee today. They must be leaders of cooperative work, work on innovative projects to meet the challenges of our society and at the same time, they must be in a proactive, critical and creative attitude of "classic" economic models. Therefore, the recruitment of employees able to adapt to change become harder. Organisations such as the OECD, the European Commission, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) and the US National Research Council are working on "21st century skills", which are now widely accepted. Many of these skills are part of the European key skills. Yet, it is notable that few employers, employees or jobseekers use these eight European skills. This highly relevant tool for skills requires concrete applications, for example through the valorization of experiences of global citizenship. Indeed, informal learning and experiential learning, which embrace all aspects of life, play an important role in 21st century skills development. And it is known today that the skills related with local, global, and digital citizenship enhance the ability to act constructively in changing or challenging circumstances. * Goals The Global STEPS project aimed to improve the use of key competences by enabling citizens to identify the skills acquired in a global citizenship experience ; and enabling employers to assess these skills against their needs. The objectives are: - Proving the added value of global citizenship in the development of key competences - Promoting the recognition of key European competences by linking them to the skills of the 21st century - Facilitating access to quality jobs by rising awareness and evaluation of these skills * Typology of participating organizations Each person involved in an action of global citizenship, looking for a job or a reconversion. Employers networks and actors of professional insertion, networks of entrepreneurs * Activities implemented - Definition of global citizenship and 7 key skills to define it: creativity, decision making, problem solving, collaboration, responsibility, flexibility, autonomy. These skills are directly linked to the European key skills. - Creation of an online tool with a questionnaire, available to people who wish to self-evaluate the impact of international experiences. - Creation of a methodological guide to allow the actors of integration, youth, mobility, citizen engagement to use it with their public. * The results achieved: - A common definition of Global citizenship - A skills framework for the online tool - A certificate, generated by the online tool, to recognize skills acquired during a global citizenship experience - An online platform available to many people to assess their global citizenship skills against the competency framework, get their results and suggestions to improve themselves. - A user guide and a methodological guide The online tool reveals the skills acquired during a global citizenship experience, which can be directly assessed by employers : users answer a test and then generate a certificate that helps them to value their skills. They are thus able to explain them to an employer using examples from their own experience. * Medium / long term benefit impacts: In the medium term, users gain self-confidence and are able to value more informal experiences. They can get to grips with the key skills and present concrete examples of them to employers. In the long term, users can progress on key skills and improve their profile. They are encouraged to take part in Global citizenship experiences. Employers and professional inclusion stakeholders are able to identify precisely the skills to cope with current global challenges in a changing intercultural context.