SIMPLY INCLUDED aims to raise awareness for the need of social inclusion of migrants in(to) companies and VET and to deal with diversity in a positive way. Moreover, it will promote the idea of more inclusive work placements and enhance the willingness of companies to employ migrants and refugees, as migrants should be seen as future skilled employees. Therefore, migrants need to be empowered to promote themselves and their strengths in a proactive and individualised way which will help them to integrate into the labour market. The project builds upon the former project SIMPLE which aimed to promote the use of peer learning techniques for fostering integration of newly arrived refugees into VET. During SIMPLE we found that migrants are often not reaching their own full potential but find themselves in a harsh competition with EU born citizens. Manuela Geleng, head of the "European Commission’s employment and social policy Refugee task-force" points out that in terms of employment refugees need in average 15 years to catch up with EU citizens. In order to provide equal access to the labour market for everybody we need to help migrants become self-effective to attain vocational education and training and employment according to their skills. SIMPLY INCLUDED will empower and sensitize migrants to recognize their own skills and competences and enable them to compete with EU born citizens which will lead to an active participation in the labour market and a more inclusive labour market. Furthermore, migrants will learn how to promote themselves in the digital application process by using digital tools. The project will provide pedagogical tools and materials for teachers which will equip them with multicultural education methods, especially creative, critical and active cooperative learning methods preventing social exclusion of migrants in VET and later on the labour market. Companies will learn and receive information about the potential of migrants and gain a better understanding of the importance of promoting inclusive work teams. The project will finally create empathy in society and promote social inclusion. The project is designed for three different target groups: 1) Refugees and migrants 2) Teachers of VET who work with migrants 3) Companies and instructors All three groups will be involved in different activities of the project by being part of the national focus groups to contribute to the creation of the IO’s; by participating in the joint staff training C1; by being beneficiaries of the IO’s. SIMPLY INCLUDED contains the production of three intellectual outputs which will be jointly developed, produced and tested by young migrants, teachers and companies and made available to the public. Two out of three outputs will focus on video production and new technologies since it will allow an easy access for migrants who are familiar with the use of social media and smartphones instead of text-intensive outputs. IO1: a multimedia video collection. The videos will contain personal stories of migrants and companies and concentrate on the positive aspects of storytelling to transfer a strong message which will create empathy within the topic of social inclusion of migrants. It will enhance the willingness of companies to employ and work with migrants and empower migrants themselves to participate actively in the labour market. The results of IO1 will be used to implement a social media campaign for social inclusion. IO2: a toolkit for VET teachers. It will focus on the creative, critical and active cooperative learning methodology and on multicultural education and enable the teachers to prevent social exclusion of migrants in VET and later on the labour market IO3: a videokit. It helps the users to approach the process of discovering their own potential and to present it to others by using digital tools such as an application video. The project will focus on multicultural education by using creative, critical and active cooperative learning methodology which has not been used much in VET and this transfer of non-formal methodologies into formal education constitutes the project's innovative aspect. The desired impact on the large scale will be an increased awareness within society for the importance and need of social inclusion of migrants in(to) the labour market and VET. This impact will be aspired for direct and indirect beneficiaries. Beyond increased awareness and acceptance, the target group of migrants will also become self-effective and learn how to promote their skills, especially their soft skills, in a new and efficient manner by using digital competences. This will lead to a larger variety of applications in VET and an increased quality of active participation in the labour market. These impacts will help to turn Europe into a more inclusive working and living habitat.
The main objective of the project was to raise society's awareness of the importance and necessity of social integration of people with a migration/refugee background in the labor market and in vocational training. Besides the work on the societal level on the one hand, an "empowerment" process on the part of the direct target group was to be initiated and strengthened on the other hand. The target group should learn how to promote their skills (especially so-called soft skills) in an effective way by using digital tools. In the long term, this increase in skills and awareness of one's own potential strengthens self-efficacy and thus promotes successful integration in the labor market and ultimately in society.
The goal of SIMPLY INCLUDED was to promote awareness of social integration of people with a migration/refugee background in companies and to strengthen a positive approach to diversity. In order to counter the omnipresent shortage of skilled workers, people with a migration/refugee background must be empowered to promote themselves and their strengths in a proactive manner and to present themselves confidently on the labor market. In the long run, this is how successful integration occurs. The SIMPLY INCLUDED project is a successor project to the previous SIMPLE project and builds thematically on it. In SIMPLE, peer learning techniques were tested to promote the integration of refugees into vocational training. However, the potential of the target group is often not exploited and remains largely unrecognized. The SIMPLY INCLUDED project sought to close the gap between skills and labor market success. The project developed outputs that used cooperative learning methods to serve the needs of the target group. The project addressed different target groups who were actively involved in different activities during the project (e.g. in focus groups).