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Work Experience for Life & Living Skills
Start date: Sep 1, 2016, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Volunteer International offers training opportunities and structured support to NEETs (young people who are not in education, employment or training) and ex-offenders. Our training is a stepping stone for young people who fall within this group, to support them to develop their basic skills, and build their confidence and soft skills. The activities we provide are a progression route for the young people we engage, and we aim to put them in a stronger position to access training or employment opportunities in the future. We are accredited to deliver an Award 'Life & Living Skills' (Entry Level 3) for NEETS, which offers a suite of units across a wide range of skills areas. The courses are tailored to our learners, and we opt for the units that best respond to their needs, ranging from 'the world of work, 'numeracy', 'IT' and 'home management'. Many of the young people we work with find themselves in a Catch 22, whereby they don't have the soft skills employers are looking for but the only opportunity to gain these skills is through on-the-job experience. This project addresses participants' needs by offering a structured work placement through which participants can gain tangible work experience and develop their soft skill, self confidence and independence.We plan to send 24 young people, aged 18-24, to spend 2 weeks undertaking a structured work placement in Seville, Spain. The placements will be entry level, and will give our learners the opportunity to gain practical work experience and support their professional and personal skills development.The majority of our learners have not travelled previously. This is a realistic timeframe for tangible objectives to be achieved whilst being attainable for learners who may be apprehensive about being away from home/overseas.By offering an international work placement, we hope to raise our learners aspirations, and push them out of their comfort zone, in a structured and fully supportive environment. Participants will have carried out UK based work placements previously, and this gives them the opportunity to build on the skills they have developed, in a cross cultural environment. We will offer placements in entry level customer service and/or construction roles that have been developed with objectives that are appropriate for our target group.We will expect all learners to have completed a UK based work placement/volunteering opportunity prior to undertaking the mobility, so that they have acquired some initial work based experience and can demonstrate commitment to this type of opportunity.Through the mobility, learners will work towards learning outcomes that contribute directly to specific units of their 'Life and Living Skills' course. In this way, the mobility will be fully integrated into the learner's course of study. We intend to work closely with host organisations to provide details of learning to be acquired during the placement, and agree appropriate ways to document and evidence learning, using the ECVET methodology as a framework.We expect the impact for participants to be the development of soft skills, and increased confidence to access opportunities outside of their immediate environment. We hope the mobility will broaden their horizons and raise aspirations, giving them the chance to understand the range of different possibilities available them to them and the self belief that they are able to achieve positive outcomes within these environments.By including the mobility as an integrated component of their course of study, the impact will be to enhance and enrich their overall experience of the course and add value to the experiential learning that they achieve.At organisational level, we hope this will have a positive impact on our future strategic direction, by giving us a platform for international work and partnership development.We hope this will impact on our staffs professional development, their understanding of the needs of our learners and create opportunities for curriculum development in the future.Host organisations will gain a better understanding of our teaching approach and a course that has been specifically designed for NEET young people. It will increase their capacity to operate within the EU and with International partners, and the quality of their preparation, implementation, monitoring and reporting skills for EU projects, which can be cascaded within the organisation. Through ongoing, structured dialogue with VI and engagement with participants on placement, they will have a better understanding of the particular needs of NEET young people and can improve the way they work with and support these learners in future.

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