The main goals were: to spread the name of the school, the region and the country on an international level; establish different partnerships with foreign organisations; to contribute to the internationalisation of the AEB; to improve the school's formative offers through European training; to empower the school to be able to provide better education, on the long run; to develop the quality of the different courses contributing to their internationalisation; to adopt European work arrangements and explore them at school; to develop the teachers' knowledge about European work environments and systems and to allow them to establish a network of contacts for future partnerships; to involve students and teachers motivating them to keep learning/ teaching using innovative different methods; to improve the skills/ qualifications acquired during the students studies at school; to include students with few opportunities in different working European environments allowing them to grow as fully empowered workers; to give the students the opportunity to experience other methodologies/ work arrangements/ work environments; to internationalise the students learning so that it could be shared with other students at school; to offer the learners the opportunity to build networks of international contacts; to allow the possibility of leaving their comfort zone giving the students the chance to daily adapt to new situations; to develop the students knowledge of different cultures and languages; to develop the participants' European citizenship. Furthermore, we wanted bto address the early abandonment of school associated to the lack of motivation to attend school. We aimed at developing our students' motivation on the chance they might have to be invited to participate in such a tremendous opportunity of learning "in loco" and with more appealing methods. Another aspect that we hoped to gain was the development of our students' level of spoken and written English as it would be the language of communication while abroad. We would also expected to improve the level of entrepreneurship and initiative when faced with unknown inexpected situations. Another important area of development and knowledge is the area of security and safety rules at work. In fact, students are taught about important safety rules but these project would give them the chance to experience those rules in other foreign environmental workplaces. We would like to point out that, with this project the participants developed their authonomy and responsibility. All in all, and as the main aim of this project was to improve to a greater extent the quality of the education offer of our organisation, we wanted to develop and deepen the key competences and skills of our staff through the opportunity of learning from others as well as to establish cooperation partnerships with foreign organisations for the future.
The main reason why we decided to apply for an Erasmus Grant in this field was the previous evaluation of our school that concluded we had serious problems regarding the students' results and both students and teachers unwilling to participate in the school. It was implicit in the document that some of the problems were directly related to the way the school was managed but also to the lack of motivation of both teachers and students. Another issue that worried us was the high number of students that abandon their studies, mainly on these kind of vocational courses. We had about 170 students in these courses. Actually, our organisation has established as one of its most important objectives to improve the quality of vocational education and the internationalisation of its educational offers. In this context, we thought that it was really important that our students and teachers had the opportunity of experiencing different professional relations in foreign workplaces where they would have the chance of acquiring different technical methods and customs. This knowledge would not only be used by the participants but also be shared with other elements of our community namely the ones that deal with these courses, to enrich the curriculum and the learning process. This project wanted to allow our students to experience their trainning in different working European environments; dealing with different real situations. We also strongly defend that these opportunities abroad and the experience gained would boost the impact of the vocational courses offered by our school in our local community. It would be a reward for the most commited students and a motivation to finish their course and education at school. Apart from all that is already stated, trhe students and the teachers, who would accompany them, would have the chance to develop their language skills in English.