Access for young VET students to teaching and training methods and work experiences in other countries helps to improve their employability in a global economy: work-based learning is critical for employability at all education levels, particularly in the current context of extremely high youth unemployment. However, Agriculture is not a popular vocational area in Europe; student numbers have dropped dramatically in the last 10 years and therefore there is a clearly defined need to increase the quality and attractiveness of this sector in many European countries. Opportunities for physical mobility in agricultural VET traineeships is high but the exchange of ECVET-units between European schools is low. Professionalisation of staff is essential to make internationalisation in education a success as they play a crucial role in learning international competences. The Amoove21 (Agricultural Move 21st Century skills) project addresses these challenges by:1) Creating a sustainable network in which annually accredited learning mobility opportunities are offered to VET Agricultural students. The Amoove21 project specifically focuses on agricultural education programmes on livestock/dairy farming, horse farming/equine and animal care. There are no international education opportunities for these programmes yet. In the project the partner network creates nine enriching ECVET units of two weeks in which both theory and practice is offered in English to a mixed group of national and Amoove21 partner students. The ultimate goal of the project is to make sure that the ECVET units are sustainable and will be used also after completion of the project.2) Increasing teachers’ international experience and professionalism. The ECVET units will be developed by teachers that are teaching at the six partner institutions. The teachers develop the ECVET units with their national colleagues and with teachers from the partner institutions. By doing so the teachers become more internationally competent and their professional orientation, knowledge and skills will grow. 3) Increasing students’ accredited 21st century skills to become competitive in a growing international labour market. Through virtual international orientation at home and by physically participating in the ECVET units offered abroad, youngsters will be equipped with digital, theoretical, practical, social and cultural skills which will enhance their chances to be competitive on an international labour market. The transnational nature of the Amoove21 project enables the involved schools to jointly develop nine ECVET units. To realize accreditation of the units’ contents, the units will be embedded in the curricula and the EU ECVET Toolkit will be used. Next to the ECVET units, the Amoove21 project results in virtual assignments. A large group of students works together on virtual assignments that have two aims: to increase the 21st century skills of the students and to increase their knowledge of each other’s cultures. The ECVET units and the assignments will be developed by teachers and the students will carry them out during a pilot phase. Teachers join the students during the last days of a pilot in order to evaluate the pilot and to further improve the unit based on the outcomes of the evaluation. Participation of the teachers in these activities increases their skills and international competence. Furthermore the teachers participate in teacher training sessions on subjects as ECVET and eTwinning. A virtual calendar on the Amoove21 website will be used to annually offer opportunities to students to gain learning and work experience abroad. This platform is sustainable as it will stay online after completion of the project. The fundamental change that the Amoove21 project is aiming for is better employability of European agricultural VET students, more professional European teachers, higher quality of European agricultural VET education programmes, growing understanding and cooperation between VET systems and companies in different European countries and that companies may open up faster to mobility requests. The ultimate goal of the project is to make sure that the ECVET units are sustainable and will be used also after completion of the project.The Amoove21 project is a collaboration of Clusius College (NL), Nordwin College (NL), Skjetlein Videregaende Skole (NO) and Axxell (FI). Every project partner brings its own expertise and will use this expertise in the development of the ECVET units. All partners cooperate actively with local and regional agricultural businesses and thus relationships between education and enterprises have been firmly forged. Each Amoove21 vocational team will involve at least 1 business partner who will A) have an important role in deciding the contents of a unit and B) offer students opportunities at their company to see how theory learnt at the college is translated into practical applications in industry.

Context/backgroundIn the last years, many people from the Middle East and North Africa came to Europe, to live and to work. They face serious problems. Also 2nd and 3d generation children have problems with their integration. Results are unemployment, bad education and criminality. The paradox is that among these groups, there are potential valuable workforces, where European population is aging and even shrinking. ObjectivesMain objective is to improve the integration of newcomers in the VET system and to prepare them for a better position in the Western society.Other objectives are:-To inform teachers and school managements about the NIK project, with the idea that NIK will become a regular part of the school program-To make local/regional authorities more aware of the integration problem and the solution which NIK can offer and to let them put the topic “integration” on their agenda.- To establish cooperation between the partners authorities and political makers, and also between the European countries (with the guidelines for creating a cross sectoral network)- To develop the understanding for each other (culture, society) as it can be developed in the future (with all created IO material, such as e-learning material, guidelines for cooking events for a Multiplier Event and the game.Number and profile participantsWe had the following groups of participants:1.VET students and newcomers. They participated in the cooking events and used together the NIK game. The age from the VET students was between 17 and 20. Variation in age among the newcomers was bigger: between 14 and 30. Number: 150-2002.Teachers and school management: Directly involved teachers discussed the project with colleagues, the same for school management.Number: 503.Local/regional authorities and organisations: 150-2004.Other interested people were reached via 6 Newsletters and the website.Newsletters: 250Website www.newcomerkitchen.eu: more than 7000 unique visitors. ActivitiesThe project had 4 intellectual outputs:IO 1: Manuals for setting up a network, for publications and for dissemination.IO 2: Manual for making effective e-learning materials.IO 3: Designing and implementing the NIK gameIO 4: Manual for organising cooking events.All outputs were placed on the website and in the Dropbox.Apart of the IOs, NIK had 4 TPMs. Due to COVID19, the last one was online.Also 5 cooking events and 5 multiplier events were organisedResults an impact attainedThe website gives a good impression of the results: All manuals from the IOs are uploaded. The same for the Newsletters and the recipes. If there is a connection between the impact and the number of unique visitors (7000) then we are optimistic. On school level, managements have decided to continue with the project and in some schools, it has become an integrated part of the school program.Impact can be described as follows:-Students, newcomers and teachers are enthusiastic about the materials and activities and trained in the use of it.-School management looks for possibilities to integrate the project in the regular school program and to use it for promotion of the school, also for newcomers. National Multiplier Events were good moments to interest other schools.-Support of the integration of Newcomers, by national/regional authorities which have put the “Integration”- topic on their agendas.Potential longer-term benefitsThe user-friendly structure of the game (no language, no complicated instruction) invites for further extension among VET schools, and active participation of Newcomers.More qualified Newcomers will enter the labour market. But that will be really on the longer term.