Within the province of Limburg, Genk has one of the highest numbers of families in which the mother has had little to no schooling. This is in great contrast to the rest of Flanders. In Genk, pupils often didn’t have the possibility nor the opportunity to gain professional experience from their home environment before we started the Erasmus+ project. Poverty is a great concern within our area and we want to help families in Genk. We strongly believe that our participation significantly contributed to a better future for our underprivileged pupils. Our main objectives in this project were the introduction to the logistics processes abroad, the development of responsibility, self-reliance and the further development of their language skills. In these economically challenging times, we believe it is extremely important to provide our underprivileged pupils with learning opportunities that will allow them to grow personally and professionally, today, tomorrow and for the rest of their lives. The Erasmus+ project has undeniably contributed to these objectives.
One of the priorities of Atlas College, a secondary school in the centre of Genk (Belgium), is to enable pupils to develop into independent world citizens with a critical mindset. In their specialization year, "logistics employee", pupils are trained to become highly qualified logistics workers. The main goal of the program is to reach a high competency level, and the bar is always set high for our pupils. Using this framework, we can deliver employees that offer great potential for quality and could have a rapid integration into the labour market, especially in an internationally oriented economy. Given the fact that our often underprivileged pupils with an immigration background foreign roots mostly do an internship in their own city, this project was the ideal way to give them a taste of the logistics sector outside of their comfort zone.