"Unindustria Calabria and the Union of Industrialists and Companies of Catanzaro, Cosenza, Crotone, Reggio Calabria and Vibo Valentia promoted the project ""E.Y.E. 2017 - European Young in Enterprises 2017"" which lasted 24 months, from 1st Sep. 2017 to 21st Aug. 2019. The project has been part of the Consortium local and European development strategy in terms of its internationalization. The core of the project consisted of a 90-day transnational mobility of 100 newly graduates from Calabria towards different European countries: United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland and Belgium. The project aimed at maximizing the results achieved through the realization of a previous KA1 VET project proposal and called “E.Y.E. - European Youngs in Enterprises"" (no. 2015-1-IT01-KA102-004241), coordinated by Confindustria Vibo Valentia, which was later merged into Unindustria. The Consortium managed to give it further continuity by establishing a close partnership among local authorities, training centres, associations and stakeholders from agri-food, tourism and catering sectors, which were the focus of the project “E.Y.E. 2017”. The objectives achieved by in the 24 months of management were:- greater consolidation and integration of the project management team, which also included staff coming from the Consortium's schools;- expansion of the interconnections between formal and non-formal education, professional training and labour market through the cooperation activated among schools, national and European companies, VET organisations; - extension of the regional educational offer and empowerment of schools’ outgoing guidance services addressing newly graduates thanks to the collaboration with the VET organizations;- improvement of the language skills of the project management staff and, above all, of the participants that took part in the mobility and developed a work experience in a native language context.In this regard, 100 graduates from Technical and Professional schools (specialized in Food and Wine; Hotel Hospitality; Administration, Finance and Marketing; Tourism; Agriculture) took part in a 3-month transnational mobility, which helped them learn new professional and soft skills, as well as language awareness, ""on the job"". In total, the project saw the participation of 41 male and 59 female participants, from different areas of Calabria and varied socio-cultural backgrounds. The short-term impacts produced by the project were:- 40% of the learners received a job offer from their host company or from another company located in the foreign country where the internship took place. Of this percentage recorded, 15% returned abroad only for the summer period. A further 50% came back to Italy to continue the work experience in family or local companies, enriching them with the skills acquired abroad; a smaller part (about 10%) decided to enrol in a university course in order to pursue a higher qualification;- about 90% of participants stated that they are fully satisfied with the training received abroad;- more than 80% of participants believe that they have increased their chances of finding further professional opportunities;- 91% affirmed to have improved their professional and linguistic skills;- the members of the Consortium and the European partner managed to promote further Erasmus+ projects for the VET system and the partner schools launched new cross-board work based learning experiences for students;- European VET providers had the chance to look more closely at the management dynamics underlying the monitoring, evaluation and recognition mechanisms of such projects, while the hosting companies gave a boost to the internal internationalization process of their own staff."

"The project “S.E.E.D.S. - Strengthening knowlEdge and compEtences to Develop new Skills ""(2018-1-IT01-KA102-006370) was developed by UNCI Agroalimentare with the help of the national Consortium and its varied foreign partnership. Agri-food and Tourism, Trade and Marketing, represented the reference sectors of the project and its VET actions. The project actions were aimed at 111 young graduates from school curricula related to the sectors above mentioned: Agriculture, Agri-food and Agro-industry; Administration, Finance and Marketing, Tourism, Food and Wine Services, and Hotel Hospitality. The mobility experiences promoted were long-term (4 months - ErasmusPro). In total, 52 male and 59 female candidates, aged between 19 and 22, were selected, coming from different Italian regions: Campania, Veneto, Tuscany, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Liguria, Sicily, Molise and Marche. The training activities developed under the form of an internship in host companies chosen on the VET learners’ specific features (aptitude, as well as professional needs).The objectives and impacts achieved by “S.E.E.D.S.” were the following:- consolidation of an organized and defined VET cooperation made up of the right social actors (VET schools, public authorities, trade associations) capable of supporting young people in their accessing the labor market.- implementation of 111 mobility experiences in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Malta, and Spain, for the enhancement of technical-scientific skills relating to the professional sectors of reference (100% of internships, in fact, were perfectly in line with the profile of the selected participants).- growth in the employability level of the young graduates who took part in the mobility (15% of beneficiaries entered the labor market following their Erasmus internship by securing a job position either in their host companies or new businesses belonging to the same professional sectors).- enrichment of linguistic and managerial skills for the Consortium members and all the representatives engaged in the project design and implementation; improvement of the language skills of direct participants through the OLS platform (more than 95% of learners declared an improved language knowledge in a second European language).- acquisition of more in-depth knowledge about the European funding mechanisms (many consortium schools, during the months of management of ""S.E.E.D.S."", participated in the Erasmus+ Program for the promotion of initiatives related to Key Action 1 - Mobility for school staff; UNCI Agroalimentare itself has obtained the Accreditation to the new Erasmus 2020-2027 Program under the Key Action 1 to continue supporting the mobility of VET Learners.- greater integration of the operating systems of different organizations related to VET with the aim of increasing the quality of training courses and feeding pedagogical research activities (the foreign receiving organizations were able to better investigate the management dynamics underlying the Learning Outcomes monitoring, evaluation and recognition mechanisms; on the other hand, the companies hosting the internships gave its internal teams a crucial contribution towards their internationalization)."