Job Skill Recipes / Different approaches to developing skills to access the labor market.

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...

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 explored 4 identified vocational education and training approaches, that root in non-formal and informal education, in order to find out how they could be adjusted in different European realities or/and combined together, improving their results. Three expert partners worked together through online meetings, field visits, and organizing pilotactivities, in order to build their capacity, improve and promote the methods at local, national, and transnational levels. Each partner of the project had a high experience in at least one of the above-mentioned approaches. Within the project's framework partners established an open and structured dialogue between them, implementing regular meetings and field visits, getting to know each other's work, gaining from each other’s experience.

Throughout the project, we achieved several concrete outputs and results. The project led to a strong consortium sharing good knowledge of the four identified methods of non-formal and informal vocational education and training, ready to scale up and promote them to their local communities and to other organizations and actors. 3 informal guidebooks were delivered, one for each methodology, shared among the partners, that became the basis for a complete guide able to be shared to more actors. These included in-depth research and analysis of partner models, successful field visits to each partner country, implementation of small-scale pilots for each methodology, and extensive dissemination activities to share our findings and methodologies. Additionally, we established a strong network among partners, facilitating future collaboration and combined activities. Among others, we: - Explored and adopted in a certain level on all the four above mentioned methodologies - Increased the quality of our work. - Set capacity building for each participant organization to adopt other methodologies. - Addressed common needs and priorities. - Established a strong network among partners.