The term ‘inactive women’ refers to women who are neither employed nor unemployed (not registered themselves as looking for a job). According to the Eurostats statistics the inactivity women rate in Slovakia was 37,1%, in Spain 31,2%, Romania 43,1% and in Turkey 66,4% in 2014. Moreover, quite number of women who are placed in this category, declared that they want to work if conditions change: 56.300 women in Slovakia, 983.000 in Spain, 309.000 in Romania and 1.295.000 women in Turkey, in last quarter of 2014. Last but not least, many of these inactive women are either taking care of baby/children or elderly (15,9% in SK) or they are in formal education and training (40,6%) which means more than 50% of inactive women population are youngers. Ratios are similar in other partners' countries. Therefore, there are quite many inactive (young) women who declare that they want to work if job conditions suit to overcoming their obstacles. Thus, we are talking about a large portion of women in Slovakia and Europe, consisting of younger women, maybe without experience but with good interpersonal skills; and mature women on the other hand, bearing natural and experience oriented talent that have been away from the labor market for some time; both named as inactive women. An increase in the employment rate, and in particular the employment of women, can be achieved only if proper and flexible form of employment is available. Tourism is undoubtedly one of the most promising and fastest-growing sectors in Europe. It is proven fact, that more females than males are working on a part-time basis within the tourism industry. The main advantage of part-time work is that there is more flexibility in the hours worked. In fact, part-timers are usually more flexible than full-timers in terms of hours of work. It can be the case that the flexibility of part-time work is likely to attract more female employees since it enables them to maintain a balance between work and family responsibilities. However, part-time or flexible working could create difficulties when it comes to staff training, due to lack of time and logistics. At this point, the introduction of mentoring concept is complementary solution together with employment in tourism sector; for integrating or re-integrating inactive women in the labor market. Based on this phenomena, the concrete aim of FlexTour project is to provide e-training program for inactive experienced (in business/working life) women to be able to enter/re-enter labor market especially in flexible form of employment in the field of Hotel Industry and Gastronomy as 'mentors', so that, they will do 'mentoring' to other inactive women ('mentees') including youth, migrants and Roma people, who will start part-time (flexible) working in tourism field, who can be low educated or good educated, but willing to have an flexible form of working, and an employment opportunity in Hotel Industry and Gastronomy. Knowing about mentioned facts and realizing the philosophy, FlexTour idea brings together many different professionalism together for reaching to project aim. World of work, VET institutions, chamber, mentoring concept experts NGOs, ICT developers came together for the implementation of this project. This partnership is built for developing FlexTour's portal containing e-learning platform with enhanced e-learning material inserted for all target groups vocational developments; Mentors, Mentees and final Employers; training them in an efficient program while establishing mentor-mentee relations and starting guidance to mentees while they are learning and working and all target groups supplying a feedback to better improve and develop the model and to make it a 'working proven model' for other similar activity fields. This working proven model will improve the total output quality in the sector while being cost effective from employers aspect, who will be able to supply their services more economically and in better service quality; based on this continuously receiving mentoring support while learning and working. Therefore, this FlexTour' working proven model will support all three target group beneficiaries.
The project FlexTour focused on tourism, which is undoubtedly one of the most promising and fastest growing sectors in Europe. The gastronomy, tourism and hotel business sector offers a unique opportunity for flexible forms of employment for the target group of economically inactive but experienced women, who at the same time offer the opportunity to reconcile their family and work life effectively. Family background as well as job satisfaction is important in every woman's life. Therefore, the reconciliation of these two activities is an integral part of creating the right conditions for returning to the labor market and carrying out its own implementation in the working environment. According to Eurostat statistics, the inactivity rate of women in Slovakia was around 37% in Spain, around 31%, in Romania around 43% and in Turkey 66%. In addition, according to statistics, there are many women who want to work if conditions change: 56,300 women in Slovakia, 983,000 women in Spain, 309,000 women in Romania and 1,295,000 women in Turkey. Knowing all these facts, the project FlexTour has been realized with main idea and aim to offer an effective e-learning service training package aimed at increasing the employment of inactive women and bringing them back into working life to become attractive again to potential employers in the labor market. Project target groups were inactive experienced (in business/working life) women to be able to enter/re-enter labor market especially in flexible form of employment in the field of Hotel Industry and Gastronomy as 'mentors', so that, they can do 'mentoring' to other inactive women ('mentees') including youth, migrants and Roma people, who should start part-time (flexible) working in tourism field, Thus, FlexTour will opened doors in flexible working (employment) opportunities for both future potential mentors (first target group) and future potential mentees (second target group). Third target group, Hotel Industry and Gastronomy enterprises also benefits from the project by gaining mentors in the sector supporting their employees and helping to increase their quality and productivity. FlexTour e-learning training program was created for this target group, consisting of modules for mentors, mentees and women entrepreneurs. Self-evaluation questionnaires were created to obtain feedback and to evaluate graduates of this education system. The questions in the self-assessment questionnaires for each module (mentors, mentees, women entrepreneurs) have different scores depending on their importance. In addition, an interactive educational web portal www.flex-tour.eu has been created with an electronic handbook/user manual, which serves as a guide for navigating the web portal. Users should study Users´ Manual first, then create an user account for joining to FlexTour e-Training Programme. The web portal is complemented by short tutorials and appropriate animations with avatar elements for a better representation and understanding of the subject matter. Training modules, self-evaluation questionnaires, web portal, e-manual have been translated into the national languages of all project partners in addition to the English language. After the finalization of the e-learning modules, movies and the complete platform, online pilot testing has been realized for the aim of making the e-training course accepted by potential users. This was, et the first hand, to improve our e-learning content. The participants understood the purpose of the FlexTour project and considered that the outcomes of the project are suitable for inactive women who want to start a flexible form of employment, either as mentors or mentees, and have been tested with this positive e-learning program. At the end of the project, a closing event was held, attended by more than 104 participants, indicating the interest in and output from the project. We can therefore conclude that the impact of the project's outputs on the target groups is positive and the benefits from it are long-term.