The main goal of ‘Real Challenges for VET students’ (RC4VETs) project is to create realistic challenges based on a real problem/situation for the students and facilitate their transition into the labour market. These challenges will be designed by real companies based on their needs and will be worked by one or more teams of Vocational Training students from different countries. One of the main characteristics of the challenges should be: multidisciplinarity. It means that it should be worked with students from different study programmes. RC4VETs aims to eliminate the GAP that exists between the theoretical and practical knowledge received during the training and studies, to create practical challenges for the students in a competitive environment, which dominates in the professional world and to integrate these challenges into the work of our teachers and educational centers. The target groups of RC4VETs will be the students of six vocational training providers from: Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. The partnership offers studies, among others, for IT: Commerce, Business, Administration and Tourism studies of ISCED 3 and 4 levels. The idea is that every partner finds a local company that could be able to design a challenge and mentor it. Students and teachers with profiles needed to solve the challenge are going to be grouped in multidisciplinary and international teams. They are going to solve the challenges proposed by companies during five months. During the process, students will be supported by employers and teachers. The main result will be a report on the resolution of each challenge. This report will be prepared in a collaborative and transnational manner by all participants. In addition to this The resolution of the challenges will produce documentation such as presentations and reports, all these results are an indispensable part of the project itself. All these materials will be open and available. The main idea of the project could work or be exported to other Erasmus+ programmes. RC4VETs will contribute to reducing skill shortages and gaps, reduce youth unemployment, increase entrepreneurship and innovation and finally will have the potential to foster social inclusion. It will add value to the EU as it will encourage to improve soft skills and to develop open-minded, entrepreneurial and qualified European professionals who acquired international experience and who can add significant value to the labour market as well as to the wider society in general.
The main goal of RC4VETs project was to create realistic challenges based on a real problem/situation for the students/trainees and facilitate their transition into the labor market. These challenges were designed by real companies based on their needs and were solved by one or several teams of VET students/trainees from different countries. One of the main characteristics of the challenges was their multidisciplinary approach, with students/trainees from different study programmes. RC4VETs aimed to eliminate the GAP that exists between the theoretical and practical knowledge received during the training and studies, to create practical challenges for the students/trainees in a competitive environment. The main objectives of the project were to improve training in order to increase the Europeans’ employability, foster the participation of the centers in the international mobility programs for students/trainees and staff, as well as the internationalization of Vocational Training in neighboring countries and to support their development, and to promote the development of the key competences, social inclusion, professional and personal lifelong learning for all, as well as social and educational value of European cultural heritage.
We believe that RC4VETs has contributed to bridging skills gaps or skill shortages among young people, reducing youth unemployment, developing entrepreneurship and innovation and has the potential to promote social inclusion. This kind of projects are much needed to help students/trainees in ensuring their smooth transition to the labor market. Young job seekers are struggling a lot as the youth unemployment rate in the EU is twice as high as the overall unemployment rate. Therefore, we believed that with support and guidance from educational institutions and businesses, students/trainees would be able to prepare themselves personally and professionally before successfully stepping into the labor market. In general, Europe lacks a strong relationship and connection between business and the education system and there is a need to ensure a better correspondence between the needs of the labor market, promote employability, eliminate the mismatch between the requirements of the labor market and the skills acquired in the education system. There is a real need to review the current VET offers and curricula to eliminate overlaps and adapt to future labor market needs and improve students' soft skills.