Objectives
🔷️The main theme of the project is set out from the title of the project: allow youth to experience the impact of soft skills. The choice of the theme was made after research and facts emphasizing the gap between the skills that employees possess and the abilities that employers are looking for. After a thorough analysis of the gap, young people gathered to illustrate how transversal skills are key points in the labor market.
Nonformal education, one of the main assets in the Erasmus+ program, provides the necessary challenging and creative environment together with strong educational activities followed up with reflection. Through this project, young people will try to understand the difference between the hard skills they learn at school, university, etc, and the soft skills which are not necessarily taught in a specific framework and format but are considered experiential learning. The objectives of this project are:
To foster mutual understanding of soft skills and their role in the employability of young people.
To give knowledge regarding soft skills and their characteristics.
To allow participants to experience soft skills development practically and understand their relevance in the working environment.
To improve the international competencies of participants by working in an international context and environment.
To boost participants’ personalities with key competencies that will help them to work more efficiently.
To make them more familiar with transversal skills such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, leadership, time management, Emotional Intelligence, Conflict Management, Critical thinking, and Adaptability.
To improve those cross-competences of participants and experience new methods that can be transferral to life.
To give a chance to young people to experience a different way of learning, experiential learning where they will take the initiative.
Activities
➡️The activities of the project are designed accordingly to highlight the particular skills young people aim to develop. Based on the group stages of Tuckman, they start a journey of forming a group dynamic that will perform with synergy after the cooperation and integration of the team. Some of the thematics the project will approach are problem-solving, public speaking, conflict management, time management, empathy, communication, and many more.
The types of activities introduced are simulations, specifically designed games, debates, small group activities, role-playing, outdoor activities, and mindfulness. Participants profile 30 motivated young people who feel that their skills are inadequate regarding the labor market, whose goals and potentials need support and who want to establish a valuable and skillful personality and career. The project will include also participants with fewer opportunities.
Impact
Participants of this project will be able to:
~ Enhance teamwork and group dynamic skills.
~ Develop time and conflict management in case study scenarios.
~ Practice new methods of planning and prioritizing.
~ Learn diverse learning methods in a new multidimensional setting.
~ Explore what are transversal skills.
~ Engage in debate activities and how to disagree in a non-violent way.
~ Boost their potential for employability by implementing the soft skills learned in their working process.
~ Learn how to apply soft skills in a working environment and make their hard skills survive in the long run.
~ Improve their ability to communicate their needs and their ideas in a foreign language.
~ Develop self-confidence, and improve behavioral, cultural, technical, and contextual skills through activities.
~ Understand more about the other cultures and expand their vision about European citizenship.
~ Interact and communicate with people from different backgrounds, get out of their comfort zone, and build trust.
~ Get familiar with reflection methods and key competencies referred to in the Youthpass Certificate.
🔹️The impact we expect is to raise young vigorous personalities who can manifest their value in the labor market and acknowledge the power of soft skills in personal as well as professional development and career. We believe that adapting soft skills in the working place can make young people more motivated to act, as humans by nature need to understand something spherically in order to do it effectively.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand". Confucius