Long-term unemployment is one of the main concerns of policymakers. Apart from its financial and social effects on personal life, long-term unemployment negatively affects social cohesion and, ultimately, may hinder economic growth. In total, 4.5 % of the labour force in the EU-28 in 2015 had been unemployed for more than one year; more than half of these, 2.8 % of the labour force, had been unemployed for more than two years. It is widely accepted that when European labour markets emerge from the current economic crisis they will be profoundly changed. If those who are long-term unemployed are to have any chance of finding quality employment they must be given the tools to successfully adjust to this new reality, as even ‘old’ jobs now require ‘new’ skills. Support agencies working with the long-term unemployed are struggling to come to terms with the situation as many of their target group have been removed from E&T years. Educational qualifications and adequate skills are still the best insurance against unemployment. The New Skills Agenda for EU (2016) reflects a common vision about the role of skills for jobs, growth and competitiveness and social cohesion. People need a broad set of skills to fulfill their potential both at work and in society. Acquiring skills is a lifelong process and starts very young, and continues to be strengthened throughout life, and allow people to thrive in fast-evolving workplaces and society, and to cope with complexity and uncertainty. Europe faces a basic skills challenge. People need a minimum level of basic skills, including numeracy, literacy and basic digital skills, to access good jobs and participate fully in society. These are also the building blocks for further learning and career development. Participation in LLL is needed more than ever before. Access to LLL opportunities remains uneven across socioeconomic groups, and some groups of the working-age population, in particular third-country nationals, have less access. It is a commonly experienced phenomenon that those who could benefit most from E&T are the ones less likely to engage. The current project comes to support the efforts of Member States to offer high quality opportunities to low-skilled, unemployed men and women to upgrade their digital and employability skills, so that they can be better empowered to re-enter work, address skills mismatches and exclusion, while promoting the digital agenda for Europe. The direct target group is adults with a focus on women (low-skilled, long-term unemployed) who will first record their current digital skills (through self-assessment), second acquire or upgrade their digital skills related to employability in order to bridge the skills gap and meet the digital needs of the labour market and third validate their new digital skills through the open badges. The indirect target group is Adult Educators, leaders and providers of Adult Education, as all products to be developed will be provided open for use for the benefit of adults. Surely the Adult Educators will also be supported in their efforts to raise the quality of Adult Learning thus increasing participation to meet the ET2020 Target of 15%. Based on the above, the e-SKILLS4ALL project focuses on low-skilled unemployed adults with a focus on women heavily affected by the recent crisis and adult education organisations and their staff. While it is more than likely that the proposed products to be developed will be relevant to learners of all ages the project is specifically targeting the unemployed and will ensure that the learning tools are customized to suit the learning needs and learning preferences of this target group. A significant emphasis will be placed on developing the digital and employability skills. From partner experience it appears that the majority of long-term unemployed are less likely to have good ICT skills which are essential in almost all employments today, whereas the Digital Initiatives reinforce the need of all to help meet the high demand for digital skills in Europe which are essential in today's job market and society. The consortium consists of 6 organisations from 6 EU countries which cover a wide range of expertise. A geographical balanced representation, as well as representation from different types of organizations to meet the needs of the project (public, NGO, SME in ICT, VET Provider) is ensured. All organizations possess the skills and competences required complementing each other. All partner organisations have either a direct or indirect link with the target group or the adult providers. The consortium plans the development of 6 Intellectual Outputs ranging from a benchmark survey on identifying the needs of participants, to the design of the digital charter for the professional programme to be offered, to the development of a tool for assessment and validation. 4 meetings are planned, as well as 6 multiplier events, staff training and blended mobility
All files relevant to this project including, CVs and contracts of staff member, timesheets, travel reports for all people involved, Intellectual Outputs, Quality and Dissemination reports are provided as part of the present report in the following link: http://repository.erasmusplus.website/eskills4all/ (Username: evaluator Password: Evaluator101!) Context/Background The eSkills4ALL project seeks to understand the digital world while it aims to update the digital skills of low digital skilled adults. These adults may face challenges as they deal with increasingly complex and diverse learning situations in a constantly changing work environment with the involvement of new technologies and a the ever changing labour market with highly technical demands for skills. Basic digital skills are essential for bridging the gap between the education and the work and achieving a better job as well as a higher salary. Objectives With the right skills, people are better equipped to find good-quality jobs and can fulfill their potential as confident, active citizen. If those who are long-term unemployed are to have any chance of finding quality employment, they must be given the tools to successfully adjust to this new reality, as even ‘old’ jobs now require ‘new’ skills. Therefore, our objectives were to design, develop, test, implement and disseminate an innovative online training application that will help those with low digital skills (predominantly women but not exclusive) to gain a new set of skills adequate to better their career or simply get a career. Undertaken Activities Europe faces a basic skills challenge. People need a minimum level of basic skills, including numeracy, literacy and basic digital skills, to access good jobs and participate fully in society. These are also the building blocks for further learning and career development. Thus, the consortium decided to investigate the current scene of each partner country to identify the current needs (IO1). 2 surveys were conducted, one with 5 employers from each country to conclude the skills they need their staff to have, and then from this we created a second survey. From this research, we concluded 28 essential digital competencies that were the selected and divided into five categories: Information and Data Literacy, Digital Content Creation, Communication and Collaboration, Safety and Problem Solving (See Tree Structure). These 5 modules were divided between the partners who identified the Module Title, Main Objective, 3 Topics, Learning Outcomes and Employability/Soft skills and who then wrote the content and created the questions. We also developed 6 Open Badges. 1 per Module and a final eSkills4All Expert badge if you get all 5 badges. To gain a badge, you must get 70% or above in the multiplier questions test. Through this process, Open Badges can be turned into new collaborations, jobs, internships, and richer connections between lifelong learners. Our platform (https://academy.eskills4all.eu/) was then built and is available in 4 European languages; English, French, Greek and Romanian. It has been tested by all partners, pilot tested by our direct target group in all partner languages and used by many to gain badges already. The feedback has been extremely positive, and it has resulted in Emphasys in Cyprus and WIDE in Luxembourg, setting up drop in centres for those who have questions about preparing a CV, practice their soft skills etc. We also created an Up-skilling Handbook for the target group and the organisers and includes a: - Description of the project - Description of the eSKILLS Training Programme - Curriculum of be covered - Outline and schedule of on-line and in-house training/HUBS in Cyprus and Lux. - Practical Arrangements: Dissemination, Venue, schedule of training, registration procedures etc. - Registration and participation procedures: on-line registration, selection of courses, time schedule, participation requirements etc. - Assessment and validation procedures: self and external evaluation, screening test prior, during and after participation in the programme, certification etc. - Initial instructions for the programme -Templates to run the training course The toolkit is also translated into the 4 European languages; English, French, Greek and Romanian. We then ran Pilots lead by CIVIC in partner countries to validate the Training course which was followed by a report of findings. We managed to do pilots with just over 100 people and each of them went very well. You can see a testimonial on our websites Homepage. Target Group The direct target group is adults with a focus on women (low-skilled, long-term unemployed) who will first record their current digital skills (through self-assessment), second acquire or upgrade their digital skills related to employability in order to bridge the skills gap and meet the digital needs of the labour market and third validate their new digital skills through the open badges. The indirect target group is Adult Educators, leaders and providers of Adult Education, as all products to be developed will be provided open for use for the benefit of adults.