The project is focused on improving Vocational Education and Training System in partner’s regions. The main aim of the project through international cooperation is to map the situation in the field of Vocational Education and Training with the help of questionnaires distributed to vocational school students in order to determine their job requirements, satisfaction, future plans and motivation. Research on Regional and International level will be a source of information for the actors of Labour Market (educational institutions, students, teachers, counsellors and employers). They can be starting materials for improving VET System, to establish a high quality Pedagogical/Methodological Framework. By exchange of information and experiences on international level, partner institutions can use the materials for professional consulting services, mainly in preventive counselling and career guidance. The results of Regional and International research, and all the project activities and products are aimed to improve the quality and skills levels of young people on the Labour Market. Number of methods and suggestions will be recommended for the primary target group in order to support and help them in School-to work transition. The dissemination of the project results will be ensured by – active involvement of the target group into project activities, articles about the project, website in five languages, brochure, leaflet, DVD. The sustainability of the results will be maintained by all the partners after the end of the project by implementing innovative methods into their daily practice. Conclusions and recommendations developed by project partners at the end of the project will serve as the basis for improving VET System.

Employment challenges for persons with disabilities (PWDs) have been an important issue all over the EU. The most common barriers to their integration include their long-term unemployment, age, insufficient education and difficult social conditions. Solving their situation requires a comprehensive approach involving all concerned stakeholders. Special attention should be paid to social and occupational rehabilitation and, incentives should be provided to employers to raise the employment level and retaining of persons with disabilities. We have endeavored to identify new forms and approached within the international context.The main objectives of the project included exchanging good practices in the field of integration of PWDs to labour market, developing and strengthening of an international network of organisations active in the field of facilitating the reintegration and supporting the inclusion of PWDs to labour market through innovative education, raising awareness and sensitisation of employers to employ PWDs by promoting the cooperation of labour market actors from different sectors and at different levels.The specific objectives of the project included the creation of an e-collection of good practices, round-table discussions, questionnaire surveys for employers and successful PWDs, innovative training programme for PWDs, a package of services for employers and dissemination materials (i.e. a flyer, website, brochure). The partnership engaged 4 organisations from 4 partner countries - CA Spoluprácou pre lepšiu budúcnosť - Veľký Meder (Slovak Republic), Napra Forgó Nonprofit Közhasznú kft. (Hungary), IZAP - Slunečnice z.ú. (Czech Republic), Fundatia crestina diakonia filiala Sfantu Gheorghe (Romania) providing consultancy services and career guidance to disadvantaged groups, social services for PWDs or, as accredited employers of PWDs, operating sheltered workshops.The main product of the project is the Innovative Training Programme for PWDs considering the requirements of the current labour market. The most important areas of education and labour market training for the target group were identified based upon:1.electronic collection of 12 good practices and experiences from the international environment,2.recommendations from 57 labour market actors collected during round table discussions,3.conclusions of questionnaire surveys participated in by 69 employers, and4.in-depth interview with 43 successfully employed PWDs.The innovativeness of the education programme lies in the fact that it has been developed based upon a comprehensive approach to the reintegration of the target group focusing on success factors, it is flexible, comprehensive and effective. The education program has been tested in partner countries on the sample of 37 participants.The outputs of the project also include an innovative package of services for employers containing various forms of cooperation and learning opportunities, recommended methods and services to enhance their empathy to employing PWDs.The brochure contains a collection of successful life stories that can serve as an example for other persons with disabilities.All materials prepared under the project are available free-of-charge electronically on the website http://success-erasmusplus.eu.Impact:The project had a positive impact on the staff of partner organisations, contributed to obtaining new knowledge and to the development of their professional, methodological and social competences in the field of international cooperation as well as cooperation with PWDs. The international cooperation between partner organisations has intensified during the project cycle. Project activities at national level contributed to the creation of partner networks between experts and organisations operating in different sectors. The innovative training programme has been integrated in the educational portfolio of each partner organisation and made available for other candidates. Participation in the pilot testing of the education programme has contributed to the strengthening of self-confidence, communication skills and social competencies of PWDs and increased their employability in all partner countries. The main benefit for the employers was that the project activities contributed to raising their awareness, enabled networking of organisations and facilitated the exchange of experience in the field of employing PWDs.The long-term benefits of the project include the following:•free access to project products and their utilisation in everyday practice by other organisations,•strengthening the involvement of organisations working with disadvantaged persons in the education process,•motivation of PWDs to lifelong learning,•better understanding of the situation of PWDs and reducing their discrimination, •strengthening the motivation of other employers to employ PWDs,•utilisation of experience and international examples of good practices.

"“Illiteracy, defined as the total inability to read and write, has now been almost completely eradicated in EU, the phenomenon of functional illiteracy is becoming Increasingly serious.” EU Parliament’s report on illiteracy & social exclusion-2002. Functional illiteracy is reading, writing and calculation skills that are inadequate ""to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level”. Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language. According to a recent study from OECD, it is concerning about 80 Mio people from 15 to 65 in EU. Amongst the measures recommended to reduce functional illiteracy, the implementation of innovative trainings remains one of the best options. ICT based trainings are a suitable solution and also will participate to reduce the digital gap. The MIMR project has developed a distance learning training in order to improve basic and transversal skills for functional illiterate persons. The main objectives were:- Developing basic & transversal skills - Promoting innovative practices in education using distance learning toolsThis training includes 5 modules: Reading and writing, Mathematics, Digital skills, Entrepreneurship, English languageOur special project focus was on the music thematic for the following reasons:- Most of the functional illiterate persons have experienced academic failure. This project has created a different learning environment from what they have experienced before in order to motivate them. - Developing the same thematic during the whole training allowed to create a link among all the modules.- Finally, the music thematic has allowed to enable the trainers’ creativity and gave them the opportunity to create funnier pedagogical materials.The project partners are 4 training companies from France, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia with long working experiences with different target groups like unemployed persons. In our work, we are facing more and more functional illiteracy. This project has enabled us to develop and integrate innovative training materials will help our students to improve their basic skills and to get access to vocational training and/or employment. The project activities and methodology has been divided in 4 steps: 1 Preparation- Creation of the detailed training program including pedagogical objectives and sub-modules and evaluation process.- Selection and adaptation of the appropriate distance learning tools. 2 Creation- Creation of the pedagogical materials.All the partners took part to two full days training on how to create distance learning materials with the selected learning tools.The creation process was divided in 5 steps: creation of the scripts, the visuals, the quizzes, the audio recording and the publishing of the document and uploading to the project learning management system (LSM). 3 Implementation- Testing phase of the training on learners, tutors and trainersAll partner organisations have implemented the testing phase in their own organisations or in cooperation with different training institutions or vocational schools. Prior to that, we developed appropriate questionnaires to assess the quality and impact of the trainings and the Learning Management System.- Evaluation of the testing phase4 Availability- Creation of the online project guide for other organisations to use or duplicate this training.This guide is available from the website project and it has the following content:-Partnership-Presentation of the project-Distance learning tools-Pedagogical materials-EvaluationThe tangible results of the project:- An innovative and attractive pedagogical approach in order to improve basic and transversal skills of functional illiterate persons- A distance learning tool with all the pedagogical materials- A comprehensive online project guide including the full project methodology in order to be able to duplicate this project in another country and in another language, and also including all the evaluation reports of the national testing phases.The impacts of the project on our target group:- The increase of their interest for doing a training on basic and transversal skills - The significant improvement of their basic and transversal skills- Thanks to this, we consider that their access to vocational training and/or their employability have been facilitated. The impacts of the project on relevant stakeholders:- An interest in using or duplicating this training method and tools by other training organizations and schools.- An interest by job offices and financing organizations in communicating about this training method and developing trainings for jobseekers and employees on basic and transversal skills.The partners also noted an improvement in their skills in the creation of innovative teaching resources and the use of distance learning tools."

The main objective of our project is to develop an innovative, efficient, currently unavailable training curriculum called SCOLA Training Curriculum for teachers and trainers working in VET, with the help of which they can enhance the successful entrance of their students into the labour market. So our primary target groups are VET teachers and trainers. Our curriculum to be developed with the use of direct experiences of 7 partners (Training institutions from Hungary, Slovakai, the Netherlands, France and Austria and two vocational schools - one from Hungary, one from Slovakia) from 5 EU member states is supposed to fill a gap in the variety of courses for teachers and trainers in VET in the topic of skills and competences necessary on the labour market, because:- Although there have been several attempts throughout Europe to better connect education and the labour market, most of the developments and projects concentrate on the competence development of the students. - Those that are developed for the teachers are either local, national initiatives- or are such long courses that are not affordable and available for all teachers is VET.- or concentrate on transferring theoretical information or focusing only on one competence íeg. enterpreneurialship)Based on our widespread previous researches a short-time, immediately applicable course with motivating elements, integrating the best practices of more countries proved to be necessary in all of the participating countries. This is what we will create during our transnational project.The programme will include methods for teachers to be able to identify and develop those competencies of their students which can make entering the labour market easier for students. The consortium is represented by vocational schools and such training institutions that have close connections with the labour market, so the labour market criteria will be integrated into the curriculum. By using real life situations, easily applicable cases the labour market needs and processes can be more comprehensible and understandable for teachers. This will make them more motivated to be open for a new role: to be able to support the smooth entrance of their students into the labour market. Our aim is to develop methods and tools for teachers to increase the adaptability of students, (so it is not about transferring career and labour market knowledge), consequently indirectly we intend to develop the basic and transversal skills of students in VET.The Curriculum and its Annex will be available in six languages (English, Hungarian, French, Slovakian, German, Dutch) on the project official website and will be freely downloadable by anybody.We plan to deliver the new training curriculum to 8 teachers /participating country, so altogether to 40 teachers. Through 40 teachers participants at the training approximately 500 students in VET can be affected (min.100 students/ country).Teachers participating in the training will be much more motivated, their attitude will be more positive, and the labour market requirements will be much more visible for them. We will contribute to the development of professional skills of trainers, as they obtain a broader overview of the international relevant practices. Participant organisations’ trainers and thus the participating organisations will gain significant international know-how in the field of VET concerning the competence development of students to be able to enter the labour market successfully. This knowledge can be widely used and integrated into their usual trainings so can be accessible to wide segments.Through the professional development of VET teachers we can contribute to increasing labour market relevance of VET.

"Due to high youth unemployment in the EU and the negative economic and social impacts of it, promoting youth entrepreneurship has gained priority on the political agendas. However, regardless of huge efforts by national and European policy makers, very few young people - in 2013 only 6,5% between 15 and 29 - actually start their own businesses. Thus, the overall objective is to promote youth entrepreneurship at EU level by providing young people with non-formal learning opportunities helping them - to explore and develop their entrepreneurial initiative,- to develop and improve their leadership skills and - to acquire knowledge about business ethics and to reflect the ethical dimensions of leadership in business in the context of a ""highly competitive Social Market Economy"" (Lisbon Treaty).Usually, these competences are not at all or only to a small extent and rather superficially part of the curricula of universities or business or other professional schools. They are also hardly part of trainee or on the job training programs in companies. And it is difficult to teach these competences theoretically, they rather need innovative methods. Therefore, the proposed strategic partnership was formed by 9 partners from 5 EU Members States (Germany, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Belgium) comprising business associations, small and mediums sized (social) businesses, research centers and civil society organizations as well as associations of students and young professionals, institutions granting scholarships and other foundations and universities and business and other professional schools.The aim is to jointly put in place an innovative program of non-formal education that should be complementary to both university studies, trainee programs and further training activities of young people at the beginning of their professional career. Such a program should be designed to prepare and encourage young people to develop a spirit of entrepreneurship and at the same time a spirit of responsible citizenship and integrate both - based on to their ethical values and on the concept of the Social Market Economy” - into a new way of ethical leadership in the world of business. This can lead to engaged commitment in the field of social business, in their own start-ups or in the management of a family business or in a larger corporation.The project comprises three different strands of activities. Active involvement of young people and youth leadership are key principles of implementation. The first strand relates to the themes “Business Ethics” and “Social Market Economy”, as a reflex to the consequences of the financial and economic crisis which hit the younger generations particularly hard. Young Europeans will work together to write themselves the ""Youth Code of Business Ethics"" (Intellectual Output 1) and the ""Youth Lexicon on Social Market Economy"" (Intellectual Output 2). In addition, they will do this reflection and dialogue with experienced members of business associations and professors from the various universities which are part of the Strategic Partnership.The second strand comprises analytical activities regarding youth entrepreneurship education and training in the partner countries. The partners will conduct two surveys in their national contexts involving a) universities and business and other professional schools (Intellectual Output 3) and b) companies (Intellectual Output 4) with the aim to enquire to what extent existing teaching and training programs focus on business ethics, entrepreneurial and other leadership skills as well as on the concept of Social Market Economy.The third strand relates to the joint development of the ""Innovative Training Concept for Youth Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics"" (Intellectual Output 5) which is the key intellectual output.All intellectual outputs will be available in English and translated in all partner languages.Enhancing young people’s practical entrepreneurial skills, creativity and communicative competencies will increase their opportunities to fully participate in all spheres of society and economy on an equal basis and empower and qualify them to take the lead in shaping future European societies and to become agents for a truly “Social Market Economy”.Activities will also contribute to increasingly mainstream entrepreneurship related content in non-formal and formal education facilitating changes in the attitude of young people towards self-employment and entrepreneurship viewed as a viable option for employment and income generation. As a consequence, the number of sustainable and social youth enterprises and opportunities for self-employment will rise in the EU making a positive contribution to socio-economic development and inclusive growth. In addition, transnational collaboration of business associations will foster mobility of young people and thus make Europe a more dynamic society and labor market."