Le bénévolat, au-delà de l'engagement citoyen, un moyen de développer ses compétences douces.

This project was close to our hearts because we felt it was important that all our students, from the social healthcare stream in France and the secretarial accounting stream in the Czech Republic, should be able to gain in-depth recognition of their soft skills and become aware of the importance of these in their future jobs involving contact with people. We also felt it was important for our students' skills to be recognised through an official document that could then be presented to a future employer or higher education establishment. What's more, our vocational high school students have a low level of attainment, recognised as such by the national assessments in Year 10. Working in a different way enables them to acquire skills that they would otherwise have difficulty mastering. Finally, one of the major objectives of our project was to strengthen young people's commitment and give them the opportunity to become active citizens.

In setting up this project, we wanted to raise young people's awareness of soft skills and give them an opportunity to find out what is expected in the world of work. We also wanted to make them aware of the skills they acquire during their schooling and on which they can base their career plans. These personal values, which have been revealed through this project, will later be appreciated by recruiters. The fact that these skills are formalised in an official document will enable them to have them genuinely recognised. What's more, the civic commitment and voluntary work in which they have taken part prove that they know how to put themselves at the service of others. This highlights their interpersonal skills and their ability to adapt, as they have been able to volunteer in foreign associations where the beneficiaries do not speak their mother tongue. The project also strengthened key skills such as communication in the mother tongue, digital literacy and learning to learn in a different way, i.e. the use of active teaching methods. Social and civic skills and a spirit of initiative and enterprise have also been enhanced.

As part of our project, the students first worked remotely to learn about soft skills and then went on 4 mobility trips. The aim of the first two visits was to find out about volunteering in the project countries, i.e. the Czech Republic and France. The students then drew up a grid of soft skills that could be assessed during the voluntary work. As a transnational team, they also prepared the volunteering activities they wanted to set up. These were then presented to the associations they had visited during their first exchanges. From a distance, the associations took part in drawing up the activity projects and guided our students. During a second mobility in each country, the students set up their activities and activity projects with the beneficiaries. The professionals from the host associations and organisations assessed the students on the basis of the soft skills open badges that had been created by the students.

During the project, the students created A logbook covering most of the activities, whether hybrid or actually carried out during physical mobility, computer graphics on how to welcome KA2 into their school and how to experience it, Open badges covering the soft skills that can be assessed as part of volunteering. The trainees also put on events for the host structures and organisations. These projects led to the production of technical data sheets and concrete actions, such as activities in retirement homes and nursery schools, repairing an enclosure for turtles at Prague Zoo, organising an afternoon's recreation for Ukrainian refugee children, helping to organise an inter-club football tournament and assisting with the organisation of an afternoon hike in the forest for a group of people wanting to learn about the management of endangered local flora.