This project will produce a set of outputs that will support young people to recognise and reflect upon their soft skills development more effectively, once they have completed a mobility or youth employability focussed initiative. Many young people feel that after completing a work placement or other similar experience, they have progressed both personally and professionally, yet often struggle to clearly identify the specific ways in which they have grown or identify the exact ways in which they feel that their employability has increased, using practical and tangible examples of soft skills development. We have selected a diverse range of partners, in terms of profile and target group, in order to collaborate and develop tools that can be applied within different contexts. Project partners all offer opportunities to young people to develop their skills and better equip themselves for employment in the future, through a range of interventions, including mobility, training, volunteering and entrepreneurship programmes. Our aim is to develop tools that will support young people, and their practitioners, to ensure these initiatives have maximum impact in terms of soft skills development that can be quantified and built upon. Our project objectives are: - to improve young peoples engagement with and ownership of their soft skills development - to increase young people's employability - to raise awareness of the importance of soft skills development To achieve this we will: -- Identify the most important and relevant soft skills for young people, in terms of personal and professional development. - Gain an insight into existing good practice in supporting young people to recognise achievement in relation to soft skills - Develop a toolkit that will guide young people to assess their achievements in terms of soft skills development and support them to recognise and articulate progress. - To provide guidance for practitioners working with young people to support them to integrate the toolkit and ensure that young people are empowered to take ownership of their soft skills development. We will be working in a consortium of 8 pan European partners, over 36 months, to develop the following outputs: IO 1: A piece of research to identify the most important and relevant soft skills for young people, in terms of their personal and professional development. The research will be identify key soft skills, and highlight examples of good practice, in terms of interventions that support soft skills development in young people. IO 2: A toolkit that will guide young people to reflect on distance traveled and assess their achievements in terms of soft skills development. The tools will support users to recognise and articulate their progress, using tangible examples of where they have demonstrated strength. The tools will be designed so that they are relevant and accessible to a range of young people. IO 3: An web based application that will complement the toolkit, providing an interactive platform for young people to capture their soft skills development journey. The app will link to photos and other media files, in order to offer alternatives to a written evidencing process, using a format that is exciting and engaging to young people. IO 4: A practitioner’s guide which will support those working with young people to introduce the toolkit (IO 2) and app (IO 3), ensure it is used effectively and is integrated into the youth activities that the young people will be involved. We will have 6 transnational meetings to collaborate on the development of our outputs. The tools will all be piloted in our partner countries before they are finalised. We have a clear dissemination strategy in place to share our tools with youth practitioners and young people across all partner countries and more widely at European level. This includes multiplier events to be hosted in each partner country. The overall change we expect to see through this project is an improved process for supporting young people with their soft skills development. Impact for young people: - Increased recognition of the importance of soft skills - Increased understanding of soft skills and how to identify these within a given activity - Increased ability to articulate personal development in relation to soft skills - Improved employability and opportunities for onward progression For partner organisations: - Increased understanding of the priorities for supporting soft skills development in European context - Improved capacity to operate at European level - Increased openness and willingness to adopt new approaches and methodology within their daily work National/European level: - Increased quality of education and training and youth work in Europe, for a diverse range of young people. - Improved provision and increased emphasis on initiatives that focus on strengthening personal competences and soft skills
UMJ achieved its intended goals by producing a set of outputs that offer support to practitioners and young people. The outputs developed help young people to recognise and reflect upon their soft skills development more effectively. 7 partners that had never worked together previously, collaborated on all project outputs. The result was a partnership that had a diverse range of skills with access to a broad target group. Partners engaged with young people through various interventions, including mobility, training, volunteering and entrepreneurship programmes. The tools developed offer support to both young people and practitioners and offer maximum impact in terms of soft skills development that can be quantified upon. The objectives set by the project were to, improve young people’s engagement with and ownership of their soft skills development, increase young people's employability, to raise awareness of the importance of soft skills development. The objectives were achieved with the production of 4 intellectual outputs. Due to the Covid19 pandemic the partnership requested and were granted a 3 month project extension. The extension resulted in the project running for a total of 34 months. With the withdrawal of the Spanish partner the partnership consisted of 7 partners. The outputs developed were: IO 1: Research carried out by all partners that focused on the relevance of soft skills in all partner countries. Partners held focus groups with young people and practitioners in all partner countries, 115 young people across the partnership took part in focus groups along with 124 practitioners. This led to the identification of the most important and relevant soft skills for young people, in terms of personal and professional development. There were 8 soft skills identified; Positive Attitude, Communication, Adaptability, Time & Energy Management, Work Ethic, Problem Solving & Analytical Thinking, Teamwork, Leadership. IO 2: Following the identification of the 8 soft skills partners developed and produced a Paper Based Toolkit. The Toolkit is mainly intended for young people who are already involved in some kind of activity or project, such as study, youth volunteering projects, work experience or employability training. By trying out techniques, young people can increase their level of the soft skills and gain in self-confidence. The toolkit contains reading materials and exercises for the young person to work through. Each Toolkit section has been piloted by young people and practitioners to determine its effectiveness and usefulness. The piloting took place across each partner country throughout the summer of 2019. The Toolkit was piloted with 123 young people and 25 practitioners. The Toolkits are available to download from the project website and are available in 6 partner languages. IO 3: A web based app was developed in order to digitalize the materials developed in IO2. The app consists of the 8 soft skills previously identified. Each soft skill takes the shape of a different mountain and the goal is that as the young person works through each soft skill they will in theory be reaching each mountain top. The app was piloted in each of the partner languages between December 2019 and January 2020. The app was piloted with 110 young people across the partnership. The link to the app is accessible via the project website. It is recommended that the app be used in conjunction with the paper toolkit although it is possible to use it as a standalone tool. The app links to PDF’s from the toolkit. IO 4: A practitioner guide was developed to support those working with the young person in order to fully understand how to introduce IO2 and IO3. The practitioner guide was piloted simultaneously with IO3. The guide was piloted with 22 practitioners across the partnership. Five transnational meetings took place. Ireland the UK, Croatia, Italy, and Portugal. The final meeting was held on zoom as opposed to Greece, due to the pandemic. The meetings created a space to collaborate and to discuss the development of the outputs, multiplier events, and the sustainability post project. Large amounts of the project dissemination was delivered through social media networks with the project Facebook page uploading approximately one post per week for the last six months of the project. Email was another channel used for disseminating the project work. As the in-person events were not an option online opportunities were used to share the project tools with guidance practitioners and young people across all partner countries and more widely at European level. Through seven multiplier events partners disseminated the project tools. Six of the ME’s took place after the IO’s were finalised which resulted in all output results presented and demonstrated to 177 participants across the partnership. Two of the multiplier events took place online due to the pandemic. The project produced four Newsletters.