STEPS
Soft Skills Training Enabling Progression and Sustainability
YEAR: 2014
INTERNATIONAL
PARTNERS: Medway Counsil, OCMW Kortrijk, Mentor vzw, Maison de l’initiative, Syntra West, Community Connections (Great Yarmouth), Plymouth College of Art, Scalda, Stichting Kenniscentrum Pro Work.
MOTIVATION: The STEPS cluster (soft skills training enabling progression and sustainability) consists of nine partners who were all involved in the two seas projects SUCCESS, iLAEBOR (Pro Work involved) and Crysalis. The three projects are complementary and booked successful results in terms of soft skills training; they ensured that people with a distance to the labor market would be able again to acquire the labor market, education, and / or volunteering. Soft skills are essential and ensure that people are enabled to participate, communicate effectively and improve their personal circumstances in their own lives. Unlike hard skills, which are necessary for the proper performance of a specific task, soft skills are adaptable.
PURPOSE: The STEPS partners will collaborate on the most effective methods to engage different audiences to support and train. Both practitioners and policy makers involved in the dissemination of information. This is to convince them of the benefits of soft skills training for the unemployed in general, but also for its own operation. The focus is on various best practices that have been tested to identify and distribute in the projects. The soft skills will be seen as a path to further training, volunteering and employment. Each partner will organize regional preparatory events and workshops aimed at the target group of the cluster (professionals and policy makers). There will also be two cross-practice workshops aimed on professionals, to exchange good practices, sharing and discussing different tools organized and prepare to disseminate the results of the projects and the STEPS cluster a high cross soft skills conference.
RESULTS:
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Action 1: 7 regional preparatory events with representatives from the following sectors: Employers, business representative or Apprenticeship organisation, Education such as the local college or High school, Partners targeting specific groups e.g. mental health, learning disability, drug & alcohol issues etc. Job Centre plus Representative, HR managers etc. with 245 participants in total
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Action 2: 45 participants to each event (representatives from employer’s networks, educational organisation, work experience organisation, social economy organisation, communication network
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Action 3: Big final event 200 participants
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Action 4: 10 short films will be created, 1 web Platform, 1 publication (digital and 250 copies printed).