Omnia Around Europe is a multisectoral student and staff mobility project of Omnia, The Joint Authority of Education in Espoo Region. Omnia was awarded a Leonardo da Vinci mobility certificate in year 2009. This certificate was to recognize the capability of managing high quality mobility projects. Omnia is well known for its international activities and projects in capital area as well as in national and international level. Project will be coordinated by Omnia’s mobility team. In addition vocational fields have teachers, who are responsible for international activities. This project will be managed and implemented following the international strategy of the organisation and using Omnia’s mobility processes and good practices from previous international projects. The object of the project is to develop learners’ and freshly graduates’ professional, language and cultural and other lifelong learning skills. This project also aims to improve the possibilities to enter the job market or to get a study placement for further studies. Participating into this project improves learners’ capability to handle different kind of situations in life and interact with people from other cultures. Mobility period abroad also inspires participants to work or study in another EU country in the future. The objective of the staff mobility is to improve Omnia’s personnel’s internationalization competences. The participants get a deeper knowledge of their own vocational field, new ideas for developing own work, teaching methods or the services of the organization. Also the language, cultural and other lifelong learning skills improve. This project will focus on guidance and monitoring of the student’s mobilities. As an important result of the project the guidance skills of the personnel improve, the roles of each staff group clear up and guidance will be part of daily teaching- and monitoring work. Teachers and guidance personnel also get to know and use the ECVET-documents provided by European Comission and are able to make personal plans for contents of each student’s mobility period. The use of new social media enables more people to get to know about the results of the project. Participants represent different vocational fields. In this project there are 234 mobilities for students and freshly graduates and 42 for Omnia’s staff from different vocational units. The age of the learners varies very much, but mostly all the students are in the final year of their studies. The aims and contents of all mobilities are planned individually. The duration of the mobility period can be from 14 days (group mobility) up to 100 days (individual work based learning). For the staff there are one and two weeks staff training and teaching assignment periods. All participants prepare themselves before the mobility period. Omnia has developed a versatile preparation program including language and cultural preparation, guidance for practical matters and preparation of the documents, personal meetings with international coordinator and vocational guidance. Host partners help with the practical issues like accommodation and finding a work placement, give guidance in the work placement and evaluate the skills and competences. After the work based learning period the skills and competences will be recognized and validated as part of student’s studies. In the staff mobilities international coordinators and assistant help participants with the practical matters. The host partner helps to create suitable work program for each participant and is the contact person for the local companies and educational organisations. After the mobility participant disseminates the experiences and results in the home organization in team meetings. There are several impacts in many different levels: student/freshly graduate, staff, organisation, capital area and international. This project has big impact on students’ and freshly graduates’ working life and lifelong learning skills, and also on the possibilities to cope and further develop in the working life. Staffs' experiences and new skills benefit the organization and students by improving the quality of teaching and services provided in Omnia. The staff also get more interested in networking and taking part in international projects and development work. High quality international activities and good experiences from this project makes vocational education more attractive. For Omnia’s partners in the labour market this project gives an opportunity to get ideas and influences from European business field. Mobility projects enable long term mutual co-operation in EU, which benefits the home organization but also the host organization. Omnia’s experiences in mobility and ECVET-projects inspire also the partner organizations to develop their functions.

Keuda Group, Vocational education and training is the 9th biggest training provider in Finland. It is owned by seven municipalities: Järvenpää, Kerava, Mäntsälä, Nurmijärvi, Pornainen, Sipoo and Tuusula. The area is within 30-80 kilometres to the north of Helsinki. Keuda offers working life -oriented education and training to the young, the adults and the business life, and development services for the progress of the region.Keuda has vocational education and training (VET) in 12 establishments, or units, in all fields of secondary VET. We have some 7000 students of which ca. 2300 are adults. Our staff amounts to 620 persons, and turn-over in 2013 was 60 mill.€.International mobility has been carried out for years. After Keuda Group launched it’s first large, multi-sector mobility project for students and staff in 2014, a lot of emphasis has been put to develop internal processes: roles of actors involved in international activities, communication and co-operation between staff and students, common tools and procedures to plan and carry out the practical work, and equal opportunities of the students.IIn LevelUp –proposal, mobility is applied for 198 persons over years 2015-2017. It is an adequate amount for a large training provider like Keuda. VET students and adult learners will go on learning mobility for periods for 3-8 weeks. For staff, two types of mobility is planned. During 7-day-visits Keuda's teachers/guidance counsellor will job shadow, participate in teaching, visit workplaces and companies, and most importantly, go over ECVET practicalities with partner school’s colleagues. For guidance counsellors especially career planning is a theme of interest. Overall staff mobility is utilized for finding ways of recognizing and validating the so called non-formal and hidden competencies acquired during mobility, together with some of the more experienced long term partners. Also 14-day on-the-job-learning in companies is planned for members of staff.LevelUp -project gathers Keuda’s most active and well functioning networks under one proposal, as well as introduces some new partners. The rather impressive network comprises 14 partners from 9 countries. Mobility is carried out reciprocally with most of the partners. A Memorandum of Understanding is signed with all partners, and all mobility is carried out using a Learning Agreement template specifically developed in Keuda. LevelUp –project supports and gives framework and content to individual study paths and prior-to-mobility coaching, that are currently being developed in Keuda Group. These themes are all written down in Keuda’s strategic plan for international activities. Also recognition of non-formal and informal learning, or the so called hidden competencies acquired during international mobility is a topic that will be looked into with some of the most longstanding, experienced partners. It is essential that all the “hidden” skills acquired by students during mobility be recognized, documented, and communicated to employers who value endurance, curiosity and productivity when recruiting new staff. The paradox is that employers are not yet aware that international mobility is an excellent indicator to find these skills in a new recruit. VET-schools can do a lot to bridge the missing gap.

Internationalization is one of the priority areas in Savonlinna Vocational College. SAMI is a regional developer. The most important task of organization is to educate professionals with current and future working skills for the companies in area of Eastern Finland. There is a special need for international skills, such as language and cultural skills.The project objective is to provide well-trained students and teachers for high quality mobility periods carried out abroad. The project's objectives are based on SAM's internationalization plan. Two main key priorities will be developed in this project:1. International skills for the SAMI's students equally based on Curriculum2. Developing the quality of international activities in SAMI. The aim of the project is to supplement the vocational education, which is served in SAMI in the area of internationalization by offering training and mobility periods abroad for both students and teachers. Training contains linguistic and cultural training. On Line Language training and previously created linguistic and cultural training material and courses will be developed and tested during the project. Equality in internationalization actions should not depended on field of education, curriculum or the age of students. That is why there must be a possibility to have internationalization education for everybody. This kind of training course will be developed in this project. The total number of mobilities for students is 60, divided equally among the students. Teachers mobility periods are the part of SAMI's staff training program. The demands of working ability’s the teachers are the base of planning the mobility periods. As a result, the teachers will have new linguistic and working skills, which will affect positive way to the attitudes and values of the teachers concerning the international education and multicultural students.However, as a result of this project, the students receive a high-quality and equitable global education in their own classroom. The teacher is the leading person the international education whose attitude strongly affects especially the young students' attitudes The total number of mobilities for students is 8, divided equally among the teachers. In addition, 2 mobilitys are applied for teachers professional development period of the 14 days.There is a special need for developing the international mobility training, so that serves the skills for those students and teachers who will take part of mobility periods abroad. We want also to develop international training method and content of such that it can be to chosen by student who does not take part of mobility period, but seeks cross-cultural skills at home.

In the strategy of Kainuu Vocational College internationalization is regarded as an important part of the development work in the college. The student mobility has the key role in the international actions of the college. Student mobilities are target-oriented and they are based on curricula. The aim for the staff is that that staff members are able to work in multi-cultural and international environment and they actively develop international affairs in their own career and teaching. The main objective of this project is to offer students and teachers possibilities to have an on the job learning, working or studying periods abroad. Also through this project we want to improve the quality of the mobility process. Other aims are:- to activate language skills of the participants- to improve the knowledge of culture and working life in foreign countries- to improve social skills and group working skills in multi-cultural environment- to improve professional skills and make them more versatile The participants are 67 students, two accompanying persons and eight teaches. They represent all sectors and units of the school. The participation in the project is open for all students in youth and adult education. All participants have enough professional skills and courage to participate. Also all teachers are able to apply to participate in mobilities. The participants will be prepared before mobilities. We will utilize the training material done in European pathway project funded by Finnish National Board of Education. Also material created for assessing, validating and recognizing informal learning will be used.The mobilities will be implemented according to instructions of the school. The coordinator is responsible for administration tasks. The supervising teacher will contact the receiving partner and they agree on all practical matters during the mobility. The participants will acquire European Health Insurance Card. The school has insurances for participants. The learning outcomes will be assessed, validated and recognized. The participants will give feedback using Mobility Tool programme. The learning and cultural experiences will be shared in the school. Through this project it is possible to acquire just those skills which are needed in the working life. The professional competences of the participants will be improved during the mobilities. The participants will see and learn new ways to work which they are not able to learn in Finland. Key competences of lifelong learning are needed in modern working life, too. This project will make the students’ employing easier and will help companies to get new professionals who have international experiences. The teachers will get new capacities for internationalization and so they are able to utilize them in their own work. This expertise will be seen both when motivating student to go abroad and when teaching immigrant students. The project will also promote home internationalization because of reciprocal mobilities.

European Pathway is a project for a network of seven educational organizations located in different parts of Finland. The promoting organization is Raahen koulutuskuntayhtymä/Raahen ammattiopisto with Vaasan ammattiopisto, Kainuun ammattiopisto, Savonlinnan ammatti- ja aikuisopisto, Ylä-Savon ammattiopisto, Ammattiopisto Luovi and OMNIA as partners. Since 2012 this network has been creating a model for students´ study path to Spanish, German and French speaking countries in a project called Eurooppalainen opintopolku financed by the National Board of Education of Finland. The products created in this project i.e. language and culture courses, preparatory courses for foreign placements and a model for the recognition and validation of informal learning are particularly aimed at vocational students.The aim of the project was to arrange placements for students and staff using the previously created model, test the materials and courses, review the practices already created. Before the travel, the student participated in the specific language and culture training and can during the placement enhance and add to the skills via informal learning which will be validated and recognized after the placement period. The aim for the staff was to participate concretely in the setting of students´s learning outcomes in the Learning Agreements to match the respective study module content in curricula. This increased the staff skills in the ECVET process in international exchanges. In the preparation of both students and staff special emphasis was placed on understanding the language and cultural skills and key competences of lifelong learning. That was acquired via informal learning and validated and recognized into the students´ studies. The increased staff international skills acquired abroad increased internationality at home college.The participants in this European pathway project were students in upper secondary vocational education and training. The target group included also students with special needs. The total number of mobilities for students was 86, divided equally among the network organizations. In staff mobilities the number was 17 including job-shadowing and staff training.