Since interest in our industries and our programs, actually, all professional programs, has decreased in recent years, we wanted to increase interest in working within our industries, through internship in other countries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in our industries have decreased further. The industry is without chefs and hotel staff. Despite the pandemic, interest in our industries seems to have increased moderately since autumn 2022, which we are happy about. We applied for this project because we wanted to raise the status and interest in our vocational programs, increase individuals' mobility, motivation and self-confidence as well as their language skills and responsibility taking. We also wanted to increase individuals' tolerance and understanding of other cultures, as xenophobia has increased. Our plan was also to implement Erasmus PRO for development after high school (learning for life), which we also did. We wanted to expand individuals' professional knowledge, create international contacts and networks, increase knowledge about digitization, increase our target focus and improve the diffusion of our programs and international projects.
Virginska is a municipal secondary school with many students and programs and currently, our principal’s unit encompasses, Hotel and Tourism (HT), Restaurant and Food (RL) and the Crafts Program (HV). We applied for the project only for the HT and RL programs, before a reorganization at the school. We applied because we wanted to offer our students the opportunity to do internships abroad in various professions and because our teachers would have the opportunity to job shadow abroad. This is to increase our competence in different areas, such as professional knowledge, language, culture, digitalisation, understanding, motivation, self-confidence and contact-making, as well as to increase the allure of the programs, and secure the industries’ future competence demands.