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Guardian Angels of Accessible Travelers in Rural Areas
Start date: Oct 1, 2016, End date: Sep 30, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

VET has a decisive role in the acquisition and certification of new competences in rural areas, which face multiple challenges and they are desperate for life saving solutions. AccessAngels teams up VET and sustainable tourism to entice the interest of the accessible tourism market. AccessAngels uses a package of personal assistance paid services (PAS), already offered to disabled tourists in major cities, adapts it and offers it as a free-of-charge package to those disabled who want to experience rural tourism. This proposition works as an enticement for the accessible tourists and may elevate the obstacle of the difficult living conditions of the rural areas.The AccessAngels project aims to meet the following objectives:- contribute to employability, economic growth and social cohesion through VET- offer to adults and young people the prospect of career opportunities through VET- promote inclusion of disadvantaged groups in the labour market- ensure the sustainability and excellence of vocational education and training.- use VET in support of sustainable development and in delivering social education to youth- provide rural tourism with a competitive advantage to attract the accessible travel market- contribute to rural economies- increase awareness of the disabled people needs in rural areas- foster active citizenship and volunteerism among the youthVET organisations, accessible travelers, rural youth and sustainable tourism authorities are the beneficiaries of this project. They are all represented in the project partnership. The direct participants will no less than 1650. The project will utilise ENAT’s network to involved accessible travelers in the baseline research and testing IO activities. The nine multiplier events will be attended by members of all target groups.The project will carry out research to determine what services to include to the PAS package for rural areas. The AA service will be managed by regional authorities. A second survey among the rural authorities will investigate their capacity to manage such service. The data gathered from the first survey will be utilised to form the definition of the service, and that of the results of the second survey will be processed to create an Operations Manual for the AA service. A training curriculum and the corresponding pedagogic material will be developed. Two trainers from each partner country will attend a 5-day train-the-trainer workshop to learn how to manage and support the AA service and how to train and coach the recruited volunteers to become AA. The trainers, in collaboration with regional youth groups will organise awareness events to recruit volunteers to test the service. The testing will be in two stages in order to reach the desired quality. After each stage, the testers will deposit their evaluations based on which modifications to the service definition and Operations Manual will take place.The evaluations of the disabled testers will also be used to calculate the impact of the project, and consequently the impact of vocational education on the acquisition of new, certified competences on sustainable tourism.This project will introduce vocational education partnered with social education to service sustainable tourism. VET organisations will embed social education into a VCC certified programme and offer it to young volunteers who can benefit from it. The free-of-charge AA service offered to accessible tourists will provide the incentive to visit the rural areas, thus creating revenue to the regional economies. The regional authorities, who will have the management responsibility of the AA service, will have a tool to attract accessible tourists to their region and can enjoy economic revival and youth retention.

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