This project "Preparation of Young People for Work - Préparation des Jeunes au Travail" focuses on the unemployment among young people in Europe and ways to equip young people to improve their situation. Unemployment among young people is very high in southern European countries whereas in Germany companies are desperate for apprentices. So we decided to initiate a project for 15- to 18-year-old students who are about to decide on their future job. The schools involved in this project are in Germany, Poland, in the south of Italy and the south of France. They are schools for general secondary education, only the school in France offers general and vocational education. The schools in Poland and Germany are in rural areas, the schools in Italy and France are in big cities, but here the unemployment is worse than in the rural schools, which is surprising and interesting. Students are asked to work in teams in their home country and to present their project results in English or French at transnational meetings. Team work and presentations in foreign languages is a prerequisite for working at international companies. During the six project meetings students also work in mixed-nationality teams. During the whole project the teachers act as guides for the students to ensure the students learn to work independently and are conscious of their own responsibility for the project, for their future job and life. The students do the following activities: - reserarch and presentation of the job market in their area - creating, answering and evaluating of questionnaires on their future job, their expectations, etc. - presentation of local companies and job opportunities in videos - discussions with employers, representatives of the Employment Agencies - debate with local Italian politicians on the labour market situation of the area - interpretation Italian/German/French to English - development of guidelines for successful job applications - exposition of project results for the public in Poland and in Germany The impact of this project will be that students develop a new attitude towards finding their future job. We want the students to become more flexible concerning their workplace and the place where they live. As the students get to know people, companies working life and even family life in other European places, we want them to become more open-minded concerning their future working life and also open-minded towards people of other nationalities. The longterm benefit for each individual is that the students find a matching job for themselves or at least that they consider living and working in another European Country.
This project "Preparation of Young People for Work - Préparation des Jeunes au Travail" focused on the unemployment among young people in Europe and ways to equip young people to improve their situation. Unemployment among young people was and still is very high in southern European countries whereas in Germany companies were desperate for apprentices. So we decided to initiate a project for 15- to 18-year-old students who were about to decide on their future job. The schools involved in this project were in Germany, Poland, in the south of Italy and the south of France. They are schools for general secondary education, only the school in France offers general and vocational education. The schools in Poland and Germany are in rural areas, the schools in Italy and France are in big cities, but here the unemployment was worse than in the rural schools, which was surprising and interesting. Students were asked to work in teams in their home country and to present their project results in English or French at transnational meetings. Team work and presentations in foreign languages is/was a prerequisite for working at international companies. During the six project meetings students also worked in mixed-nationality teams. During the whole project the teachers acted as guides for the students to ensure the students learned to work independently and were conscious of their own responsibility for the project, for their future job and life. The students did the following activities: - reserarch and presentation of the job market in their area - creating, answering and evaluating of questionnaires on their future job, their expectations, etc. - presentation of local companies and job opportunities in videos - discussions with employers, representatives of the Employment Agencies - debate with local Italian politicians on the labour market situation of the area - interpretation Italian/German/French to English - development of guidelines for successful job applications - exposition of project results for the public in Poland and in Germany (Due to the pandemic, we could not have the expositions of all of us in Poland and Germany, but each country exposed project results locally.) The impact of this project was that students developed a new attitude towards finding their future job. We wanted the students to become more flexible concerning their workplace and the place where they live. As the students got to know people, companies, working life and even family life in other European places, we wanted them to become more open-minded concerning their future working life and also open-minded towards people of other nationalities. The longterm benefit for each individual was that the students find a matching job for themselves or at least that they considered living and working in another European country.