Aims and activities
Europe's political future will largely be judged on its ability of overcoming unequal opportunities for education and jobs. This is why the EU declared increasing employment and decreasing the number of high school drop-outs their major aims in their strategic paper for 2020. Many European states make great efforts to fight the high youth unemployment rates in their countries. However, results of a study about future prospects for adolescents conducted by UNICEF show that teenagers are happy despite the grim circumstances. This is especially true for Spain. For German adolescents, however, the opposite seems to be true. This is why adolescents from different cultural backgrounds might profit from each other when it comes to shaping a positive way of life and utilizing job opportunities.
Our project “Fit for work in Europe” aims at helping adolescents find their way around the European job market. It will give them access to this online platform containing vital information about the project and its results. This platform will be extended after the project's completion and involve other groups which might be able to contribute.
We would like to use these intercultural encounters to increase the teenagers' passion for other languages and cultures. This is why a language course designed with the help and conducted by students will be a prevailing aspect throughout the project.
This will include the following, more specific measures:
1. Students will learn how to professionally apply for jobs:
They will learn how to write and present their CV in English.
They will learn how to be successful in job interviews conducted in English by professionals from local companies. Role plays will help them practice difficult situations during assessments.
During their language courses, they will make each other aware of cultural differences and pitfalls in life and career and help each other overcome these.
2. Students examine their willingness and ability of finding their way around the European job market.
They compare requirements and expectations of trainers and employers in order to be successful in their host countries and learn from the experience of those who have already succeeded on the European job market.
They examine their willingness to be flexible and mobile enough to be able to work abroad. They assess and evaluate obstacles that might hinder their freedom of movement in the European job market.
They compare frameworks of national job markets.
3. Students realize that sustainable professional success is closely tied in with a balanced social life: Hands-on health education and training will enable them to preserve their psychological and physical health and integrity.
Surveys will help to examine aspects like compatibility of family and career, work-life-balance and contentedness. Those findings will be analyzed during discussions and matched with findings of other published surveys available in order to work out international differences.
Concluding the project, politicians and the public will be made aware of the students' hopes and dreams concerning the European job market. Individual posters and collages will be used to present future visions of desired worlds of life and work. The project's results will be presented to politicians and if possible to the European parliament.