By implementing this project abroad, we wanted to: - encourage discovery of the practical, professional and cultural aspects of living and working in another country; - encourage the development of language skills that students need for their professional development; - working on participants' attitudes such as responsibility, self-reliance and taking initiative; - stimulate an open mind with regard to civic responsibility and taking initiative; - provide participants with a unique opportunity to deepen their knowledge and competences; - give participants a unique opportunity to compare healthcare institutions and vocational skills in Finland to the professional skills and care institutions in Belgium; - stimulate life-long learning. Finally, we wanted to create a lasting positive impact on our students and teachers by providing them with a unique experience in which participants can develop themselves personally, professionally and linguistically.
We especially wanted to organize this mobility project for our students of the last year of our vocational training because they will soon be graduating and, in our opinion, they often have fewer opportunities to do such project abroad compared to university or college students. We realized this project so that our students would be better able to achieve the many competences that our students are expected to achieve in today's international job market. By enabling individual learning mobility, we aim to enable a sustainable effect on the participants and the organizations involved with this mobility project. By sending students on internships abroad or sending colleagues on a job shadowing project, we wanted to give them the opportunity to develop professional and linguistic competences which would be harder to achieve while being at home. We wanted to give our students a unique opportunity to compare the healthcare institutions in Finland with those in Belgium. Finally, we also want to give our courses and our school a European dimension because we are convinced that with this mobility project we create a positive and stimulating effect for participants, students and teachers and our school as a training organization.