Review

ECOTRAIN

 Ecological Training for VET Staff in Technical Professions

Reduction of CO₂ emissions, usage of less natural resources, climate-friendly manufacturing processes – within the sector of technical professions there are a lot of things that can be done in order to make a vast contribution to reduce the impacts of climate change. Nevertheless, there is often a lack of awareness about the concrete elements that every person and employee can change at his/her workspace – even within the groups of teachers/trainers/educators in VET organizations (vocational education and training) across the European Union. However, it is precisely these educators who pass on knowledge and content to the learners in training centres such as BPI of ÖJAB, who later work in technical companies and businesses. This results in a strong need for further training of teachers, trainers and educators within the framework of green practices in technical occupations.

Aims of the project

The specific objectives of G2C included:

• Encouraging failed and former entrepreneurs to learn from their experiences by providing them with the right tools.
• Developing an interactive online self-assessment tool to identify areas for improvement, strengths and weaknesses.
• Develop innovative digital educational content (online course in the form of e-learning modules)
• Providing educational resources for teachers, trainers and mentors in vocational education and training to support and guide failed and ex-entrepreneurs.

EPISODE

Enterpreneurial Skills for Disabled People

As of March 2023, ÖJAB was coordinator of the Erasmus+ funded project EPISODE. The main goal of the project was to build capacities for teachers and trainers of adults with disabilities, in order to stimulate them as well as to contribute to the inclusion of the disabled population with fewer opportunities in the entrepreneurial sector.

Project objectives

The project aims were:

• Developing a modular curriculum tailored to the educational needs of teachers and trainers of adults with any physical vulnerability
• Upskilling teachers and trainers on how to effectively reinforce their competences towards the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship of people with disabilities
• Building capacities for equal working opportunities, tackle prejudice prejudice and discrimination.

About The Project

The main aim of the project is to prepare young people from socially disadvantaged communities, from Austria and Hungary adequately for the job market of the future, putting a particular focus on the development of digital literacy and competences. Digital readiness and awareness of requirements will play a key role for young people in the future job market. On the other hand, several social skills such as communication skills, teamwork, commitment and motivation, stress resistance and resilience, etc. are becoming more important on the workplace as well. These two idea threads build the foundation of FUTURE SKILLS, a cross-border pilot project.

Project partners: Austria (Coordinator) and Hungary

Project duration: March 2022 – March 2023

Methodology

The VOICE project focuses on using the innovative and creative approach of Photovoice to empower youth workers, future youth workers and young people around Europe. It built on our successful implemented project YourEP and its follow up Europe3E, which we wanted to adapt to the international youth work context. Photovoice (and abbreviation of “Photos Voicing Our Individual and Collective Experience”) is an innovative creativity-boosting method used to share personal stories supported by photos. It aimed to enable people to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important issues through large and small group discussion of photographs, and to reach policy makers.

Results

VOICE had a positive and long-lasting impact, by equipping social and youth work students, as well as youth workers with new creative methods to work with young people. The expected direct impacts of the Intellectual Outputs described above were an increase of the quality of youth work using innovative and creative approaches, and the training of future youth workers to get familiar with Erasmus+ and international youth work. Additional positive outcomes were to foster a creative dialogue with young people, enable them to voice their ideas and develop entrepreneurship and creative skills.

Project partners: Germany (coordinator), Netherlands, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria

Project duration: May 2021 to April 2023 (24 months)

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Mental health

Mental Health of Youth in the Post-Corona-Time

This project aimed to establish and further develop a network of (social) youth work organizations addressing mental health issues of young people, as well as youth and social workers. 

The project focused on creating a framework for collecting more information on the following aspects directly related to the issue of physical and mental well-being in youth work:

• The impact and consequences of psychological stress for young people (in Europe).
• Gathering information on the psychological impact of the Corona pandemic on young people, with a particular focus on socially disadvantaged young people and youth and social care workers.
• What practical solutions already exist in youth work?
• What opportunities are there to work preventively in youth work to promote resilience and capacity building?
• What youth work methods can be used?
• What other requirements are there in relation to the situation of young people, youth workers and youth work organizations?

Project partners: Austria, Germany (project leader), Italy, Netherlands and Greece

Project duration: May 2022 to July 2023

COMPASS

Career cOnsulting and Mentoring skills caPAcity building for youth workerS working with NEETS

ÖJAB was a partner in the Erasmus+ project COMPASS from November 2019 to October 2021.

This project aimed to improve youth work’s impact on the education of NEETs while also placing a focus on NEETs’ labor market integration.

The immediate outcome of this project was a training program focused specifically on developing youth workers’ soft skills. The intent was to integrate specific knowledge and skills that are necessary for the successful career advising and mentoring of NEETs.

Project partners: Bulgaria (coordinator), France, Greece, Spain, Romania, Austria

Project website: www.compass-eu.org

Project duration: November 2019 to October 2021

MOBILNA PREŠERNOVA 

A Mobility Project of the Economics and Business School Ekonomska šola Ljubljana & Europass Mobility – an important EU Certificate – www.oejab.at/mobilnapresernova

Each year from 2017 to 2019 10 enthusiastic school students from various classes at the secondary and grammar school Ekonomska šola Ljubljana (School of Economics Ljubljana) completed three-week internships at various ÖJAB institutions and subsidiary enterprises, including at the residence and nursing home ÖJAB-Haus Neumargareten, the occupational training institute BPI der ÖJAB – Ausbildungszentrum Wien, the ÖJAB Head Office, the education, conference, and event center Europahaus Wien, and the myNext hostels, hotels, and apartments.

The objective of this mobility project, which is conducted as part of the Erasmus+ program, was to link students’ theoretical knowledge relating to office and administrative work with practical experience through their activities at ÖJAB institutions while also helping to cultivate the students’ social skills via their experience of a new working environment.

ÖJAB, as the hosting partner organization, organized and coordinated the Slovenian group’s stay in Vienna. This included arranging their accommodations, sustenance, internship positions, and cultural activities. ÖJAB also monitored and evaluated the students’ internships along with preparing their Europass and ÖJAB certificates.

The school students were accommodated at the dormitory ÖJAB Europahaus Dr. Bruno Buchwieser and provided with meals by the adjacent education, conference, and event center Europahaus Wien. Their educational program in Vienna was complemented by cultural activities including city walks and tours of various sites accompanied by ÖJAB volunteers. And on the program’s final day, all participants received the important EU certificate “Europass Mobility”, which documented not only their stay abroad but also the skills acquired during this stay.

In 2017 and 2018, Ekonomska šola Ljubljana produced a short video that presents some impressions of this project.

Project partner: Ekonomska šola Ljubljana, Slovenia (coordinator); ÖJAB, Austria (project partner)

Project duration: 3 weeks

This mobility project was supported by EU funds as part of the Erasmus+ program; increasing student mobility is one of the objectives of Erasmus+.

DROPs

Drop Out Prevention Skills
 

ÖJAB was a partner in the Erasmus+ project DROPS from September 2019 to September 2020.

The objective of this project was the exchange of experience between youth education organizations on dropout prevention-related themes. The longer-term goal here was to improve the social skills of teachers and trainers who work with groups of at-risk youths (NEETs = Not in Education, Employment, or Training).

Apart from that, the project focused on preparing educators not only to teach vocational subjects but also to function as educational and social advisors. They are to be equipped with the skills necessary to motivate students to take part in class and complete their training, with the ultimate goal being to lower the dropout rate over the long term.

In order to achieve the best possible results in this respect, various types of educational institutions were included in this project.

Project partners: Czech Republic (coordinator), Slovakia, Sweden, Austria

Project duration: September 2019 to September 2020

ALMIT

From January 2018 to June 2020, ÖJAB was a partner in the project “ALMIT” (Acceleration of Labor Market Integration of Immigrants Through Mapping of Skills and Trainings). This consortium included a further eight partners from Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey.

The core idea of this project was to develop an innovative model for ascertaining the skills of migrants and refugees, thus making it possible to support this target group’s swift integration into the labor market.

The ultimate objective was to ensure both high-quality and sustainable employment as well as fair social protections, to combat social exclusion and poverty among migrants and refugees, and to improve the conditions under which members of this target group work.

This project was divided into a total of seven work packages. In these, activities including the following werecarried out by the project partners:

• Development of an online language course including its curriculum and learning modules
• Compilation of civil society-related and intercultural course materials
• Pilot runs of the developed courses including their course materials
• Compilation of a “train-the-trainer” handbook
• Creation of an E-learning platform
• Guidelines for labor market policy regulations
• SWOT analysis relating to this project’s theme in the partner countries
• Matching with companies
• Publication including final conference in Vienna

All phases of this project involved close collaboration between ÖJAB and the other project partners. And for one of the work packages, ÖJAB was the responsible contact for the other partner countries. This work package had to do with compiling information on local labor market rules and trends as well as on rules pertaining to social assistance, cataloging of the target groups’ educational backgrounds and work experience plus compiling profiles that detail refugees’ skills, and ascertainment of current labor market demand.

COUNTER HATE

Supporting Youth Workers in the Fight against Online Hate Speech.

From October 2018 to January 2020, ÖJAB participated in the project “Counter Hate” as part of a consortium together with three organizations from Latvia, Spain, and Bulgaria.

The objective of this project was to equip youth workers with the skills and knowledge that are needed in order to develop tools and arguments with which to counter online hate speech.

Specifically, “Counter Hate” concentrated on supporting high-quality efforts to provide all youth workers with the abovementioned knowledge and tools as they pertain to online hate speech against migrants and refugees. These prevention skills were expanded upon in the form of custom-tailored responses, counter-narratives, and awareness-raising campaigns.

The project partners’ ranges of activities included the following components:

• Project survey and publication of a project survey report
• Development of an E-learning course
• Compilation of digital guidelines
• Local workshops

Project partners: Latvia (Coordinator), Spain, Austria, Bulgaria

Project duration: October 2018 bis January 2020

Project website: http://counterhate.eu

Volunteers 4 All

This Project helps Volunteers in NGOs to develop Social Skills.

Volunteers 4 All was a 20-month European project, co-funded by the European Commission's Erasmus + (KA2) program, which aimed to help youth workers and NGO volunteers develop new social and digital literacy skills in their day-to-day work need to address the refugee crisis in Europe. This project, in collaboration with four project partners, focused on promoting quality youth work in the social and digital sectors. 

In the project, an e-learning training was developed to familiarize volunteers with the possibilities of digital media, to get involved, to tell a story, to understand events, to create awareness and to bring about change. 

In addition, a digital guide was compiled, in the form of a series of learning materials as open educational resources.

Project partners: Alternativi International, Bulgaria (Coordinator), PROJUVEN, Spain, Futuro Digitale, Italy, ÖJAB 

Project duration: October 2017 to May 2019

Like Home

Promoting the Inclusion of newly arrived Migrants and their Integration into the Labor Market and the Host Society.

From December 2016 to November 2018, ÖJAB and 8 organizations from different EU countries participated in the „LikeHome" project. The overall aim of the LikeHome project was to foster the inclusion of newly arrived migrants and refugees to the host country education and training system, to the local economy and to the society in general.

As part of the project, the project partners implemented following activities:

• Development and implementation of a framework of best practice models for the assessment and recognition of already acquired skills, qualifications and competences of migrants and refugees, based on models defined by the European Commission as best-practice models
• Development of training materials for trainers, educators, and government officials responsible for reception of migrants and recognition of qualifications
• Creation of the LikeHome e- assessment tool
• Organization of Train the Trainer seminars
• Piloting

Project partners: Spain (coordinator), Austria, Greece, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italy

Project duration: December 2016 - November 2018

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme under grant agreement No 2016 - 2791 / 001 – 001. It has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.