The project aimed at strengthen the international skills of the personnel and encourage them to study and work abroad in order to increase their professional skills, foreign language skills and knowledge of foreign cultures. By increasing awareness of cultural differencies and the importance of communication we wanted to increase their ability to face people coming from different cultural backgrounds. The aim was also to gather good practices of new pedagogical teaching methods especially in the focal points of the organisation as well as validation. The goal was to utilise the gained information both in course design and teaching, and diversify and renew teaching. We also wanted to get new tools to create a validation system of informal learning. In addition, we wanted more experience of increasing the participation of the residents in order to organize more opportunities for them to meet. Finally we wanted to find new European partners to work with systematically in the future.
In the strategy of Kuopio internationalisation is seen as a natural activity in local learning institutions. Also in Kuopio Community College internationalisation is one of the focal points in the organisation’s activities. Erasmus+ project was considered as a natural way to build up internationalisation and improve the professional skills of the personnel as well as encourage them to acquire international networks. Previous experience has shown that Erasmus+ project is an excellent opportunity to gather good European practices and test their applicability in the own organisation.