Job Skills Recipes seeked to promote alternative vocational education and training models applied through Europe, that give real chances to people who cannot access the labor market or be enrolled in formal VET programmes, due to marginalization and social exclusion. By exploring four identified models, the project provided an innovative and effective solution to the labor (re)integration to a variety of target groups. Access to labor is a common challenge to people who face specific barriers such as; Social barriers, Economic barriers, Barriers linked to discrimination, Cultural differences, Barriers linked to education and training systems, etc. One way to overcome these challenges was for beneficiaries to become empowered and develop skills (soft and hard skills) that will allow them to have increased opportunities when applying for a job. The project addressed 4 different methodologies already applied for the development of skills for vulnerable people. (1) hire them in a protective yet demanding environment until they are ready to find a job of their own, (2) provide job consulting for vulnerable groups, (3) engage them in volunteering activities, (4) provide non-formal education training.
The project focused mainly on the project partners and their beneficiaries; homeless people, people living in poverty, migrants and refugees, NEETs, vulnerable groups, minorities, etc., as well the difficulty to access proper formal vocational education and training and the need for alternative training between the spectrum of non-formal and informal education. The project aimed to explore, utilize, and disseminate methodologies of non-formal and informal vocational education and training, that could be proven quite useful for the successful inclusion of marginalized and socially excluded people, who are denied access to basic goods moreover to educational and job opportunities. Moreover, the project aimed to set the foundations and examine all the four methodologies - some of them admittingly less popular (hire people and train them while employed, mobilizing them through volunteering activities) while others more popular (provision job consulting services and non-formal education classes) - within a combined approach, leading to a tailor-based vocational programme for each beneficiary according to their needs, that might be subject of a next project.