Due to the increase of life expectancy and the delay of the retirement age, the group of people over 50 has become a key group for new economical system. Nevertheless, employment and training sectors have not been transformed to respond to these changing requirements, causing the exclusion of this group in labour and training policies. In fact, people over 50 suffer high rates of unemployment and are usually discriminated when it comes to a training offer. Training institutions have not adapted their offer and methodology to this new public. The basic and transversals skills are one priority for this group. Seniors have been educated in former educational systems, with different methods and priorities. It is necessary to identify the missing skills and provide the qualification that match with the current needs and expectations in order to ensure the maintenance of this workforce and their reintegration to the labour market. The objective of the SILVER project is to foster the qualification and the employability of the workforce over 50 by the means of creating and implementing an innovative distance training. The project seeks to open a discussion with all the relevant stakeholders in order to identify the constraints of seniors in access to qualification and employment and expand the "lifelong learning" and "silver economy" concepts in companies and training organisations. The main objectives are to: - Identify the missing basic and transversal skills of seniors and the mismatches between them and the labour market needs - Improve the target group qualifications and competences by creating and implementing an innovative distance learning training. To do that the project unfolds in 4 stages: 1. Preparation Analysis of the situation of seniors in partner countries using: - Research review; - International questionnaire survey; - Organisation of a workshop with the presence of target groups. These shall provide a basis for a development of the final training programme. 2. Training creation - Training of partners about distance learning tools and LMS - Creation of the pedagogical content and LMS and uploading the pedaogical content in the e-platform. 3. Implementation - Creation of training evaluation methods - Trials of the training and analysis of results of the testing phase. 4. Availability - Creation of a project guide which contains information on the project, results and explanation of how to duplicate it. The project activities will reach out to approximately 700 persons coming from the primary target group of people who are over 50 years old as well as from other stakeholders including employers, educational institutions, counselling centres, non-profit institutions and more. Expected tangible results of the project include: - An innovative and attractive pedagogical approach in order to improve basic and transversal skills - A distance learning tool with all the pedagogical materials - Dissemination tools: project website, communication on social networks - A comprehensive project guide including the full project methodology in order to be able to duplicate this project in another country and in another language, and also including all the evaluation reports of the national testing phases. Among expected impacts of SILVER project are: - Providing different pedagogical approaches and increasing the knowledge about the target group - Improving transversal skills and knowledge about distance learning tools - Including the training developed during the project in the training offer - Identification of missing skills and mismatches with the companies' needs - Increasing the awareness about the possibilities of training and interest in undergoing a training - Fostering the self-confidence and active participation - Facilitating the employability of senior people or their continuation in training.
Given the prolongation of life expectancy and retirement age and the aging population, a group of citizens over 50 is becoming very important in several aspects of the EU national economy. However, the education, training and lifelong learning system as such is not very flexible, and this causes the exclusion of this group of citizens in terms of employment. In fact, people over the age of 50 suffer from high unemployment rates and are usually discriminated when it comes to training provision. The training institutions did not adapt their offer and methodology to this target group. The seniors were educated in the education system where digital skills, communication skills and many others either did not exist or other priorities were set in their teaching. It is therefore desirable to identify the missing skills of the 50+ people and provide them with training that meets current needs and expectations in order to ensure that this workforce is maintained or reintegrated into the labour market. The aim of the SILVER project was to promote new and innovative methods of education that will contribute to improving skills that affect the employability of people over 50 years of age. The project also aimed to open a debate between relevant stakeholders to identify the barriers that this population group has to face. It was also important to emphasize the importance of lifelong learning, the silver economy and age management in the current EU demographic situation. Partners from four countries - TREXIMA Bratislava (Slovakia), LENO Consulting (France), Endurance (the Netherlands), Human Profess (Hungary) and the Cooperation for a Better Future Veľký Meder (Slovakia) - were involved in the project. The main objectives of the project were: - Identifying the missing basic transversal skills of seniors and discrepancies between what seniors have and what is expected of them in the labour market - Improving the skills of citizens over the age of 50 through the creation of an innovative educational tool. To meet the objectives, the project partners implemented activities that can be summarized in the following 4 stages: 1. Preparation - In preparation, the partnership carried out discussion forums and a questionnaire survey, identifying the main areas of skills that seniors feel that they need to improve and, on the other hand, employers express what skills they expect from older workers. The results of these surveys as well as a summary of initiatives and policies and the situation of the elderly in the labour market are available in one of the project outputs entitled "Situation of seniors in labour market in selected countries and EU". Outputs from the first phase of the project served as a basis for the creation of outputs in the second phase of the project. 2. Creating a training program - based on the results of questionnaires and discussion forums, the project partners have built a training program structure - defined 7 main topics that form the basis of the training program. Each topic contains several areas deepening the knowledge of the topic in the form of short videos, additional documents, quizzes, respectively exercises. The training program consists of the following topics: generation gap, networking, job strategy, personal development, professional development, lifelong learning, entrepreneurial skills. 3. Implementation of the training program - creation of an electronic platform through which the training program is implemented. Once registered, the platform is accessible to both the general and professional public at www.moodle.silver-skill.eu. As part of the implementation of the training program, its testing and pilot training sessions were also carried out in each of the partner countries. Feedback to the platform was positive from all participating countries, where more than 90% of users (106 users) rated the platform as useful, deepening skills and knowledge of the topic, and visually and user-friendly. 4. Availability - creation of a project guide that summarizes individual outputs and gives guidance on how to use the results even after the project is completed. The target groups of the project were mainly citizens over 50 years of age, regardless of their situation on the labour market (unemployed / job), also employers, education providers such as counseling centers, non-profit organizations and the like. These target groups can also benefit from the results of the project in the long term through the use of open educational resources available on the e-learning platform, which can be used in different environments and through different media.