Our sister organisation E-C-C Association for Interdisciplinary Education and Consulting is also active in the area of European Lifelong Learning activities. Find out more about their projects where WIN experts have contributed to their outcomes!

SOCRATEST: Soft Skills & Creativity Assessment and Testing for Volunteers in Times of Crisis

The overall aim of the SOCRATEST project is to provide organisations which employ volunteers with support and guidance to implement internal systems of recognition of soft skills and creativity potentials, in order to empower volunteers to enhance their skills development and competences that reinforce creativity and flexibility in working environments that are characterised by velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. In order to reach this objective, the specific objectives are

  • to create Soft Skills and Creativity Identification and Assessment Tools, in order to support volunteers to recognize and validate their own soft skills, increase the awareness of the importance of soft skills in professional life, and to recognize informal and non- formal competences through evidence gathering;
  • to elaborate Self-Promotion Tools which will assist volunteers in promoting their soft skills they have acquired in volunteering, and provide the instruments they need to use for presenting and taking advantage of their soft skills in an effective way;
  • to make these materials available at a multilingual and interactive e-Platform and as mobile apps for smart phones, where parts will also be available as podcasts or can be activated by smart-home voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri.

To achieve these goals, a 6-country Partnership was created, bringing together highly experienced organisations and professionals from Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Greece and Portugal.

Website: https://socratest.eu/

Recognition of Competences Acquired By Volunteers

Recognition and validation of competences from informal or non-formal settings is commonly understood as one of the most important challenges for educational and training sector nowadays. One of the most powerful informal learning contexts is represented by the volunteering sector, where young people of all education, cultural and social backgrounds, have the opportunity to experience different challenging situations, putting into practice their own skills and getting wide experience and new competences. Most of this new knowledge can represent an asset for volunteers in other areas of their life, as, for example, in professional career.
Website: https://e-c-c.at/recovol

Family Caregiver Support

Mental disorders are highly prevalent in Europe and impose a major burden on individuals, society and the economy. They represent 22% of the EU’s burden of disability, measured as Years Lived with Disability (YLD). This burden of mental disorder is linked to the high prevalence of mental health problems – with a majority of cases starting at the early onset in life, often before adulthood is reached – and the associated impacts for individuals, society and the economy, and the fact that about half of people with mental health problems do not receive evidence-based treatments.
Family caregivers play a central role in the care of persons with severe mental illness. This is an important fact and the result is that the majority of caregivers live with the illness of their affected relative 24 hours of the day, each day of the year. According to a survey that was conducted in a number of European countries, it was reported that caregivers of persons with mental illness spend an average of 6 to 9 hours per day providing care. Additionally, 36% of these people are the only caregiver. Despite their important role, caregivers frequently feel undervalued by the health care system. Although there is no doubt regarding the important role that families play, they frequently feel that their own needs are neglected.

Website: https://www.family-caregiver-support.eu/

D-CULT – Digital Cultural Literacy as a Means for Integrating New European Citizens

D-Cult aims to standardise a method for the acquisition of a European Cultural Literacy through digital mediain order to integrate new migrant citizens, while fully respecting their cultures of origin. To this end, a ​5-country Partnership was created, bringing together highly experienced organisations and professionals from Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, and Spain.

Website: https://www.d-cult.eu/

CaseWORK

Caring for Volunteers working with Refugees In 2015, the European Refugees Crisis has brought more than one million migrants to Europe. This estimation by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) does not include the many who reach the EU without being detected. The highest number of asylum-seekers is found in Germany, followed by Sweden, France and Italy. Belgium and Hungary have very high numbers as well. The more people in Europe are looking for protection, the more help has been organized. Volunteers distribute donations of clothes, take refugees in to give language lessons, support in the communication with local authorities or in the health care process. The number of volunteer refugee helpers has risen sharply in the past three years. People are willing to help with time, dedication and financial resources. And these people are a keystone in the necessary process of integration at the earliest possible in order to minimize isolation and separation from receiving communities and to provide opportunities to asylum seekers to develop their human potential and skills. For a better help on both sides it is crucial to provide these motivated volunteers with information, knowledge and emotional support.

Website: https://casework.eu

Non-Vocational Adult Education

Main objectives of the project are:

  • transfer of knowledge, exchange of experience and good practices in adult education systems
  • increase of administration capacity of organizations offering the lifelong education possibilities
  • professional development of administrative personnel in the field of effective organization and promotion of adult education
  • professional development of adult educators, including deepening their knowledge, improving teaching skills, performing tasks and teaching methods and techniques,
  • increase the active participation of adults in social life
  • personal development of participants
  • increase of adaptability and intercultural skills of participants
  • improvement of language competences of participants
  • establishment of international contacts
  • activation of cooperation between organizations or institutions of adult education and training in Europe
  • promotion of quality improvement and innovation of systems, institutions and practices in the field of adult education and training

Website: http://ourprojects.eu/nvae/

ReEntry – Supporting Migrants into Entrepreneurship in Europe

Supporting migrant entrepreneurs in Europe is an effective means of improving their social and economic integration; providing them with equal opportunities to become economically self-sufficient in their host countries and therefore to create a more secure life for themselves and their families. Migrant entrepreneurs can also provide services and products to migrant communities across Europe which originate in their home countries; adding to the diversity of the European market, and providing a sense of familiarity to migrants who are far from home.

Website: https://www.reentryproject.eu

ValCoVol – Validation of Competences Acquired in Volunteering

Volunteering concerns three significant parts of the European society: seniors, young people and, as a consequence of the recent refugee wave, also refugees and immigrants.

Volunteers often have the difficulty of communicating an employer what knowledge and key qualifications they have acquired. Employers, in turn, often find it difficult to identify the knowledge gained when reading credentials of volunteer organizations, since these certificates usually describe the activities done, but not the acquired competencies.

Website: http://www.valcovol.eu

VET Contra – VET Teachers and Trainers Contra Radicalisation

Teachers and trainers – called „first-liners“ – need new skills and competences to be better prepared to deal with intercultural tensions between diverse groups of learners. They should be able to detect, at an early stage, indicators of radicalisation among their learners. However, many of them have had their vocational education years ago, and many of them are completely or partially unprepared to the changes in the way in which our society is organized and which conceptual aspects of radicalisation pose a threat.

Website: http://www.e-c-c.at/vetcontra

EUROPETOUR – Vocational Training in Cultural Tourism for European Heritage

The EUROPETOUR project aims at improving the professional qualification of stakeholders in rural cultural tourism areas. It does so by qualifying local staff in creating attractive offers and advancing their skill set in the use of social media marketing. The project equally addresses the creative industries, careful about a holistic and integrative approach to including all relevant stakeholders and unlock the economic potential for forthcoming, sustainable business opportunities across Europe.

Website: http://www.europetour.tips

YCARE – Youth Counselling Against Radicalisation

YCARE is a European project aimed at supporting youth counsellors in preventing and combatting radicalization. Eight countries participate in the project, Austria, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain and The Netherlands. They develop exercises and activities for youth counsellors and collect guidelines and best practices. In recent years several national and international projects have been set up to exchange and disseminate knowledge and best practices.

Website: https://www.ycare.eu

Financial Literacy Online (eFinLit) – Financial Competences Utilising Online Learning and Digital Literacy

In the current times of economic turbulence and market shortcoming, where the majority of EU citizens are struggling to manage the financial challenges they face, a real life need for the development of their financial literacy competencies has been identified. These would allow people to understand the mechanics of the economy and the market, how to deal with daily financial issues, and protect them from slipping in to extremely negative situations. Moreover, the current project directly and indirectly will promote the digital numeracy, language, reading, collaboration and communication Skills of financial disadvantaged young EU adult

Website: http://www.efinlit.eu

IntimAge – health and Social Care PROMOTION Materials That Focus on Itimacy and Sexuality in the Third Age

Ageing and Sexuality – Still a Taboo in Lifelong Learning Programmes? A group of European educational and medical experts, under participation of E-C-C, has prepared a European educational project under the Erasmus Plus Programme to develop health care promotion materials focussing on intimacy and sexuality in the third age.

Website: http://intimage-project.weebly.com/index.html

Valorize High Skilled Migrants

The Valorize project is a European project (Erasmus +) that focuses on adult migrants with medium-high professional competencies that either cannot participate to the Labour Market, or they hold low positions comparing to their qualifications.

The project aims to improve the soft skills of migrants looking for work or working in lower positions, by providing soft skill evaluation and training, and the development of an e-Portfolio and a video CV that demonstrates those skills. The project aims to develop four outputs to assist professionals, companies, trainers, employment agencies and migrants in their effort to improve migrant employability and integration into the job market.

Website: http://valorize.odl.org

FamilEU – Family Training to Support their Marginalized and Disadvantaged Members

The FamilEU project provides the necessary practical, theoretical and pedagogical framework to train social work professionals, in order to educate EU families to meet the social, economic and professional challenges in an effective way. The FamilEU will be a toolkit, built on an online e-learning platform, which will host online training modules, social network applications, data bases, information material and manuals, for social work professionals on how to train adult members of EU families, in order to provide internal support to their family members in need. Additionally the FamilEU will be also available through a mobile platforms application.

Website: http://famileu.org

Supported Employment – Empowerment and Career Development for People with Disabilities

National and European labour market policies are challenged especially when it comes to people with disabilities: there are still low employment rates, high unemployment rates and a high number of people with disabilities continues to depend on welfare.It is an agreed objective to promote projects and actions which encourage and empower people with disabilities to enter or remain in the open labour market.

Website: http://supportedemployment.eu

Social Literacy for Public Sector Staff

Social literacy means the presence of social skills, knowledge and positive human values that support the ability in people to act positively and responsibly in social settings, and also their ability to successfully and deliberately mediate his/her world as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners.

The public sector needs staff with a high level of social skills to meet public expectations. Therefore, governments and communities are interested to increase the standards of their staff and to develop their abilities for teamwork and for professional and personal life skills. Our project has contributed to these requirements.

Website: http://social-literacy.eu

MicroCraft – Marketing for Micro-Enterprises in the Handycraft Sector

The project concerns a sectoral transfer by modifying a successfully introduced self-learning concept and learning materials that were originally developed for woman farmers into self-learning course materials for micro-enterprises in the arts and handicraft sector. The partnership comprises three development partners from the development team of the previous project from Slovenia, Austria and the Czech Republic, and in order to guarantee the sustainability of this project,one additional expert partner in each of these countries, among them the Chamber of Craft of Slovenia and of the Czech Republic.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/microcraft/

Financial Literacy – Competencies for Adult Learners

Financial literacy is the ability to understand money matters, to manage credit and debt and to make sound financial decisions. Considering the nowadays economical conjuncture it is urgent that citizens are given the appropriate instruments to manage their budgets and to become more aware of the several products and financial mechanisms that financial institutions are making available.

The FinLiCo project aims to improve the financial literacy competencies of adult learners in order to prepare them for the challenges and temptations of the consumer society and to prevent situations of financial indebtedness. In order to accomplish this, a toolbox for adult learners, a handbook for trainers and a curriculum will be developed, validated and disseminated amongst stakeholders, training institutions and public bodies.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/financial-literacy/

Fashion Talk – Attract Participation and Increase Learning Motivation of Young Adults

Fashion plays an extremely important role in the lives of most juveniles and young adults. Peer groups create an intrinsic net of open or hidden requirements for the individual, and only persons with a high self-esteem and self-conscience dare to negate the dictate of fashion. For low income persons, the inability to equip oneself with all the “must have” very often leads to frustration and to a feeling of inferiority.

Because of the omnipresence of fashion, and the social importance connected with it, “fashion” could therefore be used in the educational sector as an ideal vehicle to convey knowledge about, and competences for the world in which we have tolive and to work. “Fashion talk” means a horizontal educational activity that combines young adults’ passion for fashion with important information about issues which help them to become conscious, socially, economically and environmentally responsible European citizens.

Website: http://fashiontalk-eu.blogspot.com

Stop Dropout! – Risk Detection and Flexible Prevention Against Learners’ Drop Out

The overall objective of the project is to reduce the drop out rates of learners in vocational education and training, by providing materials and tools for counsellors and trainers to develop their own skills in working with groups, to detect potential dropouts and the special characteristics of learners’ groups, provide support adjusted to individual needs, and thereby improve the quality of their vocational education systems.

The Stop Dropout project focuses on finding at-risk individuals, evaluating their needs and providing them with flexible support. It consists of three tools that counsellors and administrators can use at various school levels, educational centres and other institutions. The tools are based on a holistic approach with the focus on the individual and his/her future opportunities.

Website: http://www.stop-dropout.eu

Financial Literacy

Many adults lack in an understanding of fundamental financial concepts. Debt counselling only reaches a minor fraction of the population and only when it is (almost) too late. The aspects of financial literacy should therefore be introduced to a larger part of the European population.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/financial-literacy2008/

HIinArch – Professional Qualification for Working with Natural and Sustainable Building Materials

Professional Qualification for Working with Natural and Sustainable Building Materials that developed a Curriculum and pedagogical materials. The project has won the best practice award of the German National Leonardo Agency BiBB.

The idea of long-term sustainable development on the earth brings also a rising demand for ecological building materials, and a rising demand for people who know how to handle these materials. This was the background for the LdV pilot project “Clay plaster” that developed a Curriculum and pedagogical materials. The project has won the best practice award of the German National Leonardo Agency BiBB.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/clay-plaster/

Intergenerational ICT Skills

This project was executed between 2008 and 2010 and delt with the importance and benefits of intergeneraltional ICT Sills on Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Family, and Society Levels.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/intergenerational-ict-skills/

Golden Goal – Basic Skills & Communication Training with integrated Sport Activities

The overall objective of this GRUNDTVIG project is to enable young disadvantaged adults with particular “education resistance” to score their “Golden Goal” by improving their literacy and numeracy skills, and to promote their social and cultural integration into society.

Website: http://www.golden-goal.at

Food Literacy – A New Horizontal theme in Adult Education and Counselling

Food Literacy should be considered as a personal core competence, just as “computer literacy” or “consumer literacy”. To achieve this competence, the project focuses on:

  • to raise the awareness of multipliers in adult education to issues concerning food literacy
  • to develop materials that enable these multipliers to incorporate aspects of nutrition competence and culinary culture in their courses
  • to raise the awareness of institutions working with clients from socially and/or economically disadvantaged target groups who cannot be reached with conventional adult education offers
  • to show how food or nutrition campaigns will have to be complemented with target group specific educational offers in order to lead to sustainable results

Website: https://www.food-literacy.org

Support the Ways to Literacy

There is a widespread need to detect basic skills deficiencies during early stages of social, vocational or educational counselling. Because people who are embarrassed by their lack of literacy and numeracy skills successfully hide their deficits, advisers working in these fields have to be trained to employ strategies and methods to carefully unveil these facts without offending the social and cultural integrity of their clients.

Website: http://www.support-the-ways-to-literacy.org/opencms/opencms/wlit/de/index.html

People with Special Needs

This project aims at people with special needs and focuses on:

  • Qualification possibilities, specially for ICT
  • Auxiliary tools for people with special needs
  • Adaptation of working places
  • Social and psychological aspects
  • Finding possibilities

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/people-with-special-needs/

Best Selection of Vocational guidance Methods – A Collection of effective methods

The project disseminated eight innovative and successfully tested vocational guidance concepts which had been developed between 1995 and 1999 with the support of various EU programmes. It also developed and disseminated a selection and decision matrix for implementing successful vocational guidance methods.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/best-selection/

Labour Office & Clients – Improving the Communication Between Labour Office Advisers and Their Clients

The main objective of the project is to raise awareness for the importance of personal competences in the job counselling and job mediation process. In order to achieve better matching results, labour office staff working with job seekers and with employers must improve their counselling and their communication techniques to “understand the employers’ language”.

Website: http://www.labour-office-and-clients.org/opencms/opencms/loffice/de/index.html

Soft Skills

The project focused on the implementation of personal key qualifications into the vocational qualification scheme in EU pre-accession countries. From former experience in Central and East European countries, we had found out that the “technical” aspects of vocational qualification show high standards, whereas the necessity of integration of personal key qualifications were very often neglected.

Website: https://www.e-c-c.at/home/soft-skills/