The project was aimed at: 1) gaining international experience 2) enabling students to acquire professional skills and competences necessary to work in multicultural teams in all departments of high quality hotels while serving guests from different cultural and language backgrounds and consequently enhance their personal development and improve employability on the European labour market 3) mastering the use of foreign languages both in professional and everyday situations 4) promoting multilingualism, diversity and intercultural awareness 5) under standing other cultures, which will enable them to become active members of the European community 6) integrating education and employment, which resulted in establishing contacts that can influence the participants’ future professional career 7) showing the participants the way to plan their professional career, gain new experiences and transfer them to the local labour market in order to improve the quality of service offered by the hotels they are going to work at 8) making students open to new challenges and initiatives, strengthening their feeling of belonging to the European Union and creating opportunities to find employment on the European labour market.
ZSE is a 156-year-old secondary school providing both general and vocational education in various fields, among others hospitality and tourist industry. The school takes pride in its high academic achievements. It has been successful in many vocational competitions and ranked as ‘Gold/Silver School’. There is a volunteer club. The school students’ council cooperates with the Lublin Youth City Council and the Children and Youth Parliament. We also cooperate with local employers and universities. Together with schools from Norway, Spain, Germany, Moldova and Jordan we ran numerous international projects focused on economics, tourism, hospitality and ecology. ZSE is one of the oldest schools in Poland. We have been teaching hospitality and tourism courses for 60 years. Since 2006 we have been involved in LdV (now E+) projects within which we have been cooperating with leading hotel schools in France (École Vatel, Lycée hôtelier Georges Frêche), Germany (Hotelakademie), Majorca (IES Guillem Colom Casasnoves) and prestigious hotels. Thanks to the projects local tourist and hotel establishments can employ well-prepared candidates who have international work experience, speak foreign languages and are aware of cultural diversity.