It will be a 2-year-KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices KA229-School Exchange Partnerships Project named "Bridge To a Brighter Future" Five schools are involved:Nazilli Menderes Anadolu Lisesi, Turkey; Tertnes videregående skole, Norway; Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium Bensberg, Germany; Agrupamento de Escolas de Constância, Portugal; I.I.S. Fermi Filangieri, Italy.The project will be coordinated by Italy. According to the objectives of project, the most relevant horizontal priority will be the development of relevant and high quality skills and competences, and also promoting entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship among young people. Besides,it addresses to the priorities for the school education sector 2018: Promoting the acquisition of skills and competences, promoting entrepreneurial training, taking a holistic approach to language teaching and learning. Even if early school leaving is not a big problem in our schools, we are aware of the fact that to every single student who leaves school without certificate it is a crucial moment of life. So even if we are not focusing on early school leaving, we keep it in mind and will offer individual counselling based on our project. Recently, the whole Europe has been involved in a job crisis never known before and especially young people have had great difficulty in finding a job. Nowadays this job crisis seems to be coming to an end, but it is clear that the job opportunities in the different European countries are different from each other and especially for the young people the situation in the labor market in some countries remains difficult. Understanding future skill needs is essential for shaping education and training policies, particularly as labor markets undergo dynamic transformation driven by demographic change, digitization, extensive value chains and increased complexity in work organisation. In this century, information is already available on the internet so the students can reach it easily. Nowadays they don't need to learn information/memorize it, but learn to act. With the help of this project our students will learn 21st century skills, such as critical-creative thinking, collaborating, communicating, problem solving, and so on. This project involves some countries where the youth unemployment rate is very high, up to the 35%, and where the job opportunities for the young people remain at fixed-term contracts and occasional, and some other countries where youth unemployment rate is at very lower level, and the job opportunities are larger and salaries are higher. There will be 5 LTT meetings, with 4 students and 2 teachers from each school, and the students will be hosted in families. At the beginning, there will be some information-section about the most important future-career opportunities in different countries, through a workshop held by each hosting country. So the students will know which future jobs will be the most important in different European countries. Besides, all European and non-European citizens can attend university in another country, and this fact offers the opportunity for young people to deepen their social, professional and linguistic skills. For example, in each meeting the hosting country will provide necessary information about training courses and job opportunities, especially linked to the most important economical sector, or to apply for a university in the host country. For each meeting, the following ACTIVITIES have been planned: The students will create their Europass Curriculum Vitae and their language Passport online; The host will indicate its most important economical activity as the one with the best growth prospects in the near future İn advance . The host students will have some time to study topic, to understand better which problems are linked to it. They will announce problems, and two international groups of students (each group with 10 students) will have time to share ideas online, to look for solutions to problems, preparing a PPT about it, which will be improved during the meeting and will be presented on the last day. At the end, there will be an OXFORD-DEBATE about it and the winner group in each meeting will be rewarded. During the meetings, there will be some visits to companies and to university faculties as mentioned above. As concrete results we will have: -a network for students, to be in touch for the future, to share ideas/experiences, to be lifelong contact persons in respective countries; -a web-site in which all the activities of the meetings will be uploaded; -a poster of each meeting -a booklet in which all the steps to apply for a university and to start a company in each country will be explained ; -creative activities from meetings -PPTs Participants who study/work abroad as a result of this project, will be invited back to school to share their experience with younger students.
Last June 2021 the 2-year KA229-School Exchange Partnerships Project, named “Bridge to a Brighter Future came to an end. It was coordinated by Italy and it included the partnership of five schools: Nazilli Menderes Anadolu Lisesi, Turkey; Tertnes videregaende skole, Norway; Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium Bensberg, Germany; Agrupamento de Escolas de Constancia, Portugal, I.I.S. fermi Filangieri, Italy. This project found its main objectives in the development of relevant skills and high quality competences, including business education. Recently, whole Europe has been involved in a job crisis never known before and especially young people are undergoing great difficulties in finding a job. Even if this job crisis seem to be coming to an end, it is clear that job opportunities are different from one European country to another and especially for young people, the situation about the labour market is still very difficult in some countries. Understanding the skills of the future is essential for shaping education and training policies particularly as labor markets undergoes dynamic transformation, driven by demographic change, digitization, extensive value chains and the increased complexity in work organisation. Thanks to our project, students were given an impulse to learn the 21st century skills, such as problem solving skills, communication skills, analytical skills, good understanding of economics markets, enjoying working as a team member as well as independently. Originally this project should have included 5LTT meetings with at minimum 4 students and 2 teachers from each school, allocated in hosting families. It was true for the first 4LTT meetings in Turkey, Portugal, Norway and Germany, but not for the last one in Italy (May 2020),because of Covid Pandemia. We asked and obtained one year refferal, but it wasn’t enough and the Italian meeting (June2021) turned into a virtual online meeting. In the meetings there was the information section about the most important career opportunities in the near future of each country. Students got in touch with training courses and job opportunities, especially linked to important economic fields. They were also taken to University to know the way they can apply for and what exams may be taken in English. Students were also shown how to create their Europass Curriculum Vitae and their language passport online and they all did it even if it was impossible for some counties to upload them into the website for privacy reasons. One month before every meetings, the hosting school had to point the most important economic activity of its country with the best growth perspectives in the near future as well as some environmental problems linked to it. Consequently the involved teachers had to create two international groups of students (each group with 10 students) sharing ideas online, looking for problem solutions, preparing a PPT about their work to be presented the last day of the meeting. Surprisingly there were also very interesting OXFORD DEBATE at the end of the presentations between the two groups about their works and their different solutions and in the end of all these activities students achieved the following goals: a network for students to be lifelong contact for the future, to share ideas/experience even if living wherever they want; a website http://www.our bridge .eu/ where all the activities of the meetings have been uploaded and all the materials are free for download. A poster of each meeting A booklet about every step to do if you want to apply for university or start a business in each country involved in this project Creative activities issued from these international meetings PPTs. In the meeting in Italy, we followed the same pattern of the previous ones. It was a 9-day online meeting organized via Classroom and Meet. Participating students had the opportunity to learn about the different possibilities offered by the major public universities (Rome La Sapienza, Bologna, the Milan Polytechnic, the University of Pisa, the University for foreigners of Perugia, the Padua university and Ferdinando II of Naples) and by the major private universities (Cattolica, Luiss, Bocconi and John Cabbot), being able to compare curricula, study plans offered, courses and costs to be incurred. Within the meeting, the most interesting cities from a touristic point of view (Rome, Venice, Florence, Bologna and Naples), some Italian places of greater prestige from a cultural and touristic point of view (Le Cinque Terre, Sicily, Medieval Umbria, the Amalfi Coast and the Dolomites), as well as 4 sites of historical and archaeological interest (Pompeii, Paestum, Ostia Antica and Naples Underground) not far from Formia, which is the headquarters of our Institute. In this way they also had a virtual look at the beauty and peculiarities of our cities, and we hope they could understand and appreciate the Italian lifestyle.