With this project we hoped to encourage more applicants to restaurant and food processing, further the European dimension of our school, and continue increasing the professional & soft skills of our students and teachers. An additional goal was to expand our offering so that also cooks would get the opportunity to go on an exchange, in contrast with our previous project which was focused on bakers, confectioners and meat cutters. By the time we could apply for this project we had another project underway, but not realized in any meaningful way, as we had not yet sent any students out on mobilities. Still, we were very encouraged by how that project's planning was going, so we hoped to keep our moment up and use this project's implementation to further our original plan: work towards offering students and teachers in additional programme areas, in order to become a school with a true European dimension. This would allow us to let students train and/or work abroad in order to learn new skills or add new perspectives and dimensions to skills we already teach, increase their language skills and European and democratic awareness, and allow them to grow & become more independent as young adults.
Jåttå wanted to offer our students and teachers the chance to learn new sides to their profession in a different cultural setting and to keep collaborating with European partners with a view of increasing our school's European potential. Pre-2019 our school had very limited experience with Erasmus+ and the EU's focus and support for international collaboration, but we were encouraged in having found a partner and having an Erasmus+ project approved in 2019. The planning for that first project was going well, so we decided to apply for another round of funding immediately, to avoid having to wait a year to proceed with building our capacity in offering opportunities for international mobilities. Originally, our thoughts were to use funds from that previous project in 2020 and then immediately expand and improve our European collaboration with this 2020-project for the school year of 2020/21. However, Covid-19 and its lockdowns put us on the back foot and forced us to change all our plans. Instead of being able to start with a smaller project, gain some experience, and then expand with this follow-up project, we had to be flexible and send as many students as possible as soon as the wider circumstances allowed.