IAL Toscana VET organization has coordinated the activities of this Consortium of 3 Hotel and Tourism secondary schools, in 3 Tuscan provinces (Massa Carrara, Lucca and Pisa), with the aim of responding to the training and job placement's needs in 3 identified areas such as coastal areas of the Tuscany Region, defined as an area of "complex industrial crisis". The consortium carried out this project with the aim of implementing the experience on school-work alternation and internationalization that emerged from the common designs of the 2 previous KA1 Vet projects. The common objectives were: 1) strengthening in young people involved and in their peers a more international vision, open to the world of training and work; 2) managing and organizing different types of international activities with or without foreign partners; 3) to optimize standard procedures according to predefined quality criteria, in relation to mobility projects, with particular attention to the methods of credit recognition and integration between education/training/work systems; 4)stimulating the definition of curricular programs with an international inclination; 5)strengthening the network of foreign partners able to offer specific companies and manage this particular group of young people; 6) systematize the experience validation and credit recognition manual which, starting from the preparatory phase up to the return from abroad, makes it possible to systematize the tools available to the education and training systems, making them dialogue with each other to allow a real transparency of the skills acquired and the transitions from one system to another (e.g.: "Employer evaluation" assessment document on the skills actually learned during the internship, the Europass Mobility document, the "declaration of learning" of the Tuscany Region, etc.).
"keeping Traditional" project was born with the aim of offering a workexperience opportunity to 70 young people, to give them the necessary tools to enter the world of work, in F&B hotel and restaurant tourism sector. A sector especially the Tuscan one, in the midst of a profound transformation with the aim of adapting to the new tastes of modern consumers, in search of continuous and new emotions and new ways of living the travel experiences. Through this mobility project, participants will learn from direct experience of tourism systems in which the enhancement of the typical product is also supported by adequate accommodation and reception facilities, allowing adequate levels of hospitality for visitors to the area. In fact, typical products are not enough to ensure competitiveness in the medium-long term for a destination, if they are not supported by a system of offering services and experiences (entertainment services, events, folklore, etc.) capable of providing an image or a unified brand identity. The project participants have experienced directly in the Hospitality AREA or in the F&B Catering AREA, activities of local specialties as a necessary overall complement of the specific country area system, essential to satisfy the perspective of the modern consumer, in search of continuous and new emotions and new ways of being, for which the demand for food products is transformed into a demand for cultural experiences and events. The general aims of the project were: to implement in the youngsters skills required by the constantly evolving tourist market; increase language skills; set credit recognition methods and integrate education/training/work systems; draw up a manual for the validation of experiences and credit recognition.The Project Consortium has collaborated with 5 partners, each of which has strong links with the entrepreneurial fabric of the tourism and catering sector. They were chosen in territories with a strong tourist vocation, which could therefore provide the students with real field training experience in avant-garde companies in "experiential tourism". With host partners, the methodology for managing internships abroad was implemented according to mutual understanding agreements, ratified in the MoU, in which it is specifically established which L.O. certify and how to certify them. In addition to this, an LA was agreed to refer to for the actual final assessment of the skills and knowledge identified. The project has realized two mobility actions referred to 2 groups: GROUP 1: students enrolled in the fourth year of state professional education institutes in the hotel-tourism sector (4 weeks of stay). GROUP 2: recent qualified or recent graduates (within 12/18 months of qualification) primarily in the hotel and restaurant tourism sector, for this group workexperience has lasted 12 weeks. Host companies identified for internships has been restaurants serving typical local cuisine, agritourism products with KM products, inns expert in traditional local dishes; but also accommodation facilities in which the reception operators connect the various components of the production chain understood in the broadest sense of territorial tourist offer, with knowledge of the territory and with the ability to build personalized offers/answers for tourists who want to live the territory and its typical features in all its complexity.