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INsight

2020-2-BG01-KA105-0794102020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: BG|CZ|MK|LT|PL|EL|IT · Grant: €19,459
Creativity and cultureOvercoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal)Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Objectives

The youth mobility project “INsight” is created in full correspondence to the Erasmus+ Programme KA1 and addresses high rates of youth unemployability as a result of 3 key identified issues, namely (1) inability to identify opportunities and/or lack of self-confidence to pursue them, (2) personal and professional skills mismatches or skills underdevelopment, (3) lack of necessary real life know-how and experience. The given issues are targeted through the designing of a 7-day youth exchange program, that embodies the 8 Key Competences of Erasmus+, layers multiple educational inputs, largely based on cognitive-behavioral psychology, and combines theoretical learning structures with practical know-how in youngsters-friendly, fun, non-formal activities. The focus of the learning experience lays on (a) self-initiated personal betterment, (b) fostered professional advancement and (c) peer-to-peer international, multicultural exchange. The learning environment within INsight has been constructed as a guided step-by-step working flow, based on continues implementation of the day-by-day (in this case activity-by-activity) learned informational entities or newly acquired skillsets. The program is contextually split in 2 consequent parts with the first half focusing on development of intrapersonal skills before progressing over to the second one - exercising interpersonal ones. The concept of intra- and interpersonal intelligence has been borrowed from Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983). The framework starts with an in-depth look into the Self – how we view, relate, present and perceive ourselves, which directly impacts how we interact with others. The first days are focused on evaluating our real self, distinguishing between genuine & socially constructed/positive & negative personality traits, destroying defeating stereotypical beliefs and building self-awareness and confidence in personal capacities. Having deconstructed the past self and reevaluated the current, youngsters are later encouraged to look into their future, better one. The activities flow progresses into defining key personal values, setting goals and developing action plans towards their achievement in correspondence with the future aspirations. Youngsters are familiarized with multiple entrepreneurial and brainstorming tools, adapted for their individual, group and vocational purposes, aiming to expand their creative and critical thinking abilities and foster the development of new skills (1). The broadening of personal skillsets within the self proceeds to guided improvement in the relationship to and communication with others. Youngsters are expected to master various tools for bettering the quality of their verbal and non-verbal communication skills, so that after unblocking their maximum potential, they are able to access it, present it and apply it (2). The topical culmination of the project follows in the last 2 days of the planned learning program that targets directly youth’s employability capacity by providing youngsters with what they lack most – personal experience and know-how in the professional world – from constructing resumes to interviewing basics. The framework is then closed with the conduction of individual interviews, moulded to fit best participants' personal employability aspirations. The conductions of the interviews will incorporate all newly-learned skillsets from start to finish and will tie general theory with practical experience (3). The common understanding that initial experience should and could only be acquired through continues failing, may have been plausible in the past, but is overly outdated in the ever-changing digital presence. Therefore, as we strive to prepare youngsters to excel at any future challenges they will face, we laid a great effort on including media and digital literacy as core values during the designing of the youth exchange program. The project is also designed to act as an international and intercultural environment that fosters and promotes non-formal education, volunteering, youth work and lifelong learning as well as Erasmus+ values and European democracy amongst youth.

Project partners (7)