"CONTEXT&BACKGROUNDThe EU objective of reducing the share of early leavers to below 10% of young people aged 18 to 24 is one of the Europe 2020 headline targets. On the other hand, 16.5 % of the 20-34-year-old people in the EU were neither in employment nor in education and training ('NEETs') by 2018. As much as the statistics show us EU Strategy 2020 goals will be achieved at the end of 2020 in EU level in these topics, there are serious differences in EU countries. In our opinion, as much as the goals were achieved in general terms, this unbalanced situation in the EU shows us there is still much work to do. Another important problem is a skills mismatch in the labor market which is defined as the gap between an individual's job skills and the demands of the job market (ECDVT, 2014) A research study (Cedefop, 2016) focuses on the contribution that VET can make to reduce ESL. In the study, it is cited that ""ESL can lead to a vicious cycle of unemployment, social exclusion, and poverty."" EU statistics give us only overall rates. We do not know, ""How many early leavers come specifically from VET pathways? Why? How many of them return to education? How many choose VET as a second chance option? And how many graduates eventually? (Cedefop, 2016) According to the result of the study ""in most cases, VET appears to result in higher shares of early leaving than general education."" and ""VET is not only part of the problem, it can also be a solution, helping retain or return learners and young people to education and training."" Needs are reducing/preventing:1. early school leaving,2. skills mismatch (SM)3. NEET situations.PROJECT OBJECTIVES*Promoting decision making/planning/projecting skills of VET students.*Promoting the active role of VET students to build their life, be responsible for improving their skills and competences in accordance with their decisions for the future*Increasing awareness on co-agency approach among the schools, teachers, professionals, families, and society in Europe*Promoting the co-agency and responsibility processes among the school community.TARGET GROUP OF THE PROJECT: Teachers, student career counselors, coaches& mentors, psychological counselors work with VET students both in non-formal forms and schools.BENEFICIARIES: VET students, families of VET students, schools and education and training centers which work with VET studentsNUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS:30-40 participants (from target group and beneficiaries) will participate in focus groups and interviews from each country (in total 150-200 participants). 15-20 teachers/professionals will participate in focus groups and interviews from each country (in total, 75-100 participants).PARTNERSHIP:In the project, we have 7 partners from 5 countries (Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Slovenia). The project team consists of one university, one public body, 3 NGOs include social innovation and coaching&mentoring associations, one VET Training Center, and one VET SME. Statistics show UK and SL reached the 2020 goals while TR, IT, SP are far away. Working transnationality gives us the possibility to see different policies, approaches, practices to ensure balance in Europe.PLANNED OUTPUTS:O1: Co-Agency Coaching&Mentoring FrameworkO2: Support to Choose Future Training ModuleO3: Support to Choose Future Online Training ModuleO4: Impact Assessment of Support to Choose FutureMETHODOLOGY TO BE USED IN PROJECT: To design and implement the project, we used project management cycle methodology, social constructionism, and co-agency approach. For the activities, we will use action research and qualitative, quantitative research methods, coaching&mentoring. Training of trainers methodologies and we will design a new methodology called ""Co-agency Coaching&Mentoring"" to be used in the learning environment in VET schools.EXPECTED RESULTS AND IMPACT:Short term: *Teachers/professionals will be more aware of their students (needs, expectations, obstacles, fears, vision for the future)*Teachers/professionals will be more competent in coaching and mentoring the students.* Students will be more aware of the impact of their choices. *Families will be more aware of the importance of supporting their children.*Families will be more aware of their students (needs, expectations, obstacles, fears, vision for the future)Mid Term:*Students will decide their future career in a more effective way.*Teachers/professionals will be practicing their coaching skills.*Families will support their children more.*Students will have more knowledge about the future school and job possibilities.Long term:*Decreasing the early school leaving*Preventing mismatch in employee*Promote coaching and mentoring among VET schoolsPOTENTIAL LONGER TERM BENEFITS: Co-agency coaching&mentoring may become a good practice among EU VET schools and may be applied in other countries as well."

"According to Eurostat (2013) Health problems related with working conditions affected 7,9% EU-28 nearly two in every three people in the EU-28 who had experienced work-related health problems during the previous 12 months and had been absent from work as a consequence had been absent for at least four days. The continuous increase of young workers (between 15 and 24 years) in the world economy, raises special concerns in the safety and health. Younger workers are more likely to be victims of accidents not - deadly, more serious, than their older colleagues, because of the general lack of professional experience and understanding of the risks present in the workplace, and also due to lack training in safety and health and lack of physical and emotional maturity. In the European Union, for example, the incidence rate of non - fatal accidents is 50 % higher among young workers than in other age groups. Besides the costs and negative consequences to individuals, this phenomenon hinders economic growth and competitiveness. In many EU territories OSH issues, are already included in the curricula, but in other countries, the curriculum restraints, time limitations and teaching training priorities difficult all the process. The curricula and activities have to be continuously updated. Future of work (ILO research) is identifies new working conditions that have an impact on Workers Health and safety (non-standard forms of employment 2016; Working anytime, anywhere: The effects on the world of work 2017; etc.) Curricula and activities will be designed to be meaningful and ready to changeable working conditions. http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/future-of-work/publications/lang--en/index.htm ''MS-SM2'' aims to establish an interface between teacher education, formal and non-formal contexts in OSH. This Strategic Partnership (SP) includes partners representing different and complementary fields of expertise and previous experience with schools, in their respective countries. Besides ensuring strong involvement of teachers and high impact on the intervention, the partnership will also assure future dissemination of the project outputs and network implementation.This project should be carried out transnationally to build a SP combining OSH and education experts. By supporting teachers' education, MS-SM2, will help them to expand skills, and provide the right tools to deal with OSH issues at school. It intends to involve them in the construction of knowledge and in the sharing of best practices, which will simultaneously improve the quality of the teaching and learning process and potentially increase the knowledge of young people to protect their health and quality of life. Following the main goal of SP, ''MS-SM2'' intends to carry out a joint initiative, to implement in 3 years, that will allow the exchange of knowledge and experience developing educational teacher's guidelines in the scope of OSH. Throughout this period, the project will also support several informal approaches and resources referring to the teaching of OSH subjects. These networked activities will be carried out using an existing Web platform which answers the project's needs. Additionally, the project will increase the dissemination of best practices in the refereed web platform, potentially leading to transfer the project outputs and network implementation to the classroom. These materials for the classroom and teachers training are specially to prepare future workers about the risks in the work of the future:o To promote an increase of the teachers' professional development, by providing a diversified training blended offer (formal and non-formal knowledge achievement), through the construction of IO1; o To promote the storage of OSH educational resources in a platform by creating a repository of best practices designed for the educational/training system in safety and health;o To promote teacher's involvement (especially teachers working in schools with highly diverse, low income communities and high early school leaving rates) in innovating methodologies by using a collaborative platform to make accessible the diversified experiences from partners and by promoting training benchmarks for teachers and trainers;o To contribute to minimize young/future workers work accidents numbers by promoting OSH education and improve the awareness for the hazards at work, by constructing a OSH materials for teachers training and for the classroom, with activities and methodological suggestions on OSH, with inclusive materials, and a Students booklet ( including an audio version to low vision and blind students and a version in braille, in order to allow the replication of the ""MS-SM2"" by other agents and its spreading (digital publication).o The minority groups and people with disabilities need special protection in the working life. They meet most with the risks also. Among the goals of the proj are disseminated occupational health and safety culture for them."

According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by the year of 2018 there are more than 65 million forcibly displaced persons in the world, including 22.5 million refugees, with the vast majority in developing countries. 1951 Geneva Convention related to the Status of Refugees, have granted full labour market access for refugees, which has not been necessarily the case for those with complementary or temporary protection status or indeed refugees pending the determination of their asylum application. In addition, some countries have specific rules for persons whose application has been denied but their deportation suspended and who may be entitled to work under restricted conditions. After fleeing war or persecution, the opportunity to work and earn a living is one of the most effective ways people can rebuild their lives with dignity and in peace. From this perspective, the main purpose of this project is to promote a social inclusion of those forced to flee their homes by advocating for their right to live and build their livelihoods through their new life expectancies and interests. With this project, it is aimed to determine refugees’ social life expectancies by organizing focus group interviews and develop refugee information forms. The project also aims to find solutions to the language, vocational/non-vocational skills and social cohesion problems of the refugees who are the target group in selected project regions Turkey, Italy, Greece, Spain and Poland together with host citizens in project areas. To achieve this objective, society-oriented and individually emphasized activities that promote the integration of refugees will be carried out. By developing a preliminary test during periodical workshops, a brand-new social tool that tackle with migrant related issues will be devised. In line with this tool, an inventory, called Invented Life Inventory (ILI), that deals with social, educational and vocational parameters affecting the life expectations and future plans of refugees will mainly embrace the heart of this project.With this multi-dimensional and multi-cultural inventory, it is ultimately targeted to include refugees into vocational and/or non-vocational educations so that they can be guided to directly to the labor market if they are certified with sufficient vocational skills or they can be suggested for further educations in related fields. Certification of the trained refugees is of paramount importance in terms of achieving the main goal of the project for its motto “Invented Life”.Invented Life is not a personal test project by itself. It will have greater impact on the participants who enrich the community they live with the development of language education and orientation, non-vocational and vocational education programmes and certification processes for them as individuals who can work in accordance with the legislation of the host country.The project will continue supporting the inclusion of the certified refugees in the labor market as trained, qualified work force and thus enabling the social integration of them much faster and more profitable for the host countries. The Intellectual Outputs that the project is trying to achieve in the final alaysis are as follows:O1: Development of Invented Life InventoryO2: I dream. I desire: A Short DocumentaryO3: Development of Non-Vocational Education ModuleAs to long term and permanent impact and benefit of this project for the refugees, recognition, validation and accreditation of their knowledge, skills and competencies will make them gain a permanent and more reliable place in society and feel much safer compared to the period prior to the ILI inventory. For these reasons, devising and implementation of brand new tools (Social Adaptation portfolio and Invented Life Inventory) offering solutions for related international migration issues especially in the fields of vocational education and certification of their professional skills constitute the main activities directly affecting the outcomes and impact of the project.

"Context/background of the project;The European Disability Strategy (EDS) 2010-2020, “A renewed Commitment to a Barrier-Free Europe”, (European Commission, Brussel, Nov. 2010) defined employment and accessibility of labor market as one of the 8 areas of action. On this basis member states are required to offer accessibility to the labor market for people with disabilities and provide support structures for this target group to be able to earn their living on the open labour market. Some of the European member states have introduced the concept of Supported Employment coming from North America during the late 1980s slowly into their systems discovering the power and effectiveness of this approach in ensuring accessibility and equal opportunities on the job market. People with disabilities (PwD) are the most disadvantaged group with regards to employment. Currently in Turkey they are 8,5 million and only 15% are employment compared with the national average of over 80%. In Bulgaria their number is about 227000 and more than 60% of them are unemployed. In Slovenia they are around 850000 and only 16% are unemployed and in Portugal people with disabilities represent 8,2% of total population and unemployment rate 9,5%.It is one of the key areas of both European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 and Europe 2020 to allow full accessibility to education as well as to the labour market for people with disabilities. In many European countries and beyond accessibility to the labour market is still not given because of the lack of suitable and powerful implemented support concepts.Supported employment (SE) approach defined as a method of working with disabled people and other disadvantaged groups to access and maintain paid employment in the open labour market. Objectives: -To conduct a needs analysis to determine the SE providers training needs for providing high quality services to their clients with disabilities (Intellectual Output1)-To create a EQAVET system for recognition, validation and certification of SE providers (Intellectual Output 2)-Developing an instructions guide for the system of competencies monitoring in the SE service (Intellectual Output 3)-To provide a dedicated VET programme for training of supported employment specialists that provide services to people with disabilities which does not exist so far in Europe as officially accredited job profile.The project supports the inclusion of the supported employment approach in Slovenia and Portugal, but also in new countries such as Bulgaria and Turkey where this was done for the first time by developing EQAVET system for recognition, validation and accreditation of SE Specialists' knowledge, skills and competencies.The learning outcomes of the training program developed is in connection with the dedicated unique ECVET training programme for SE providers which covers disability awareness, acquisition of key and transversal competencies, application of interactive technologies and methods in coaching process, supported employment basis, pre employment support agenda, career counselling etc.(Intellectual Output 4)-To make pilot studies for our training program and to write a usability report. (Intellectual Output 5)-To set up an online learning system for ""Tools for SE Specialist"" (Intellectual Output 6)Number and profile of participating organisations;The project is completed by 5 partner organizations. The coordinating organization was İstanbul Medeniyet University. The other partners were Marie Curie Associatio from Bulgaria, University Rehabilitation Institute from Republic of Slovenia, Consultis from Portugal and CASGEM (a government organization) from Turkey. Brief Descrition of the Activities Completed: We conducted a training needs analysis in 4 countries. We conducted surveys to determine the needs of the people working with PwDs and supported employment providers. Total number of 232 people participated in the survey from four countries. The participants were including people working in VET Centers, employers that have employees with disabilities, people working in NGOs related with PwDs, service providers, and people working in the public bodies providing services to PwDs. We prepared an EQAVET system for recognition, validation and certification of SE providers. This tool could be used also by external bodies (VET centres, VET training providers, third sector organizations, employers etc.) for a ""third part"" monitoring of the acquired competencies. This system enables the delivering of a Declaration of the competencies acquired during the SE service. We prepared a 6 modul training program .""Tools for SE Specialist"" VET training programme for supported employment providers which is also available as an open online course, based on the needs analysis conducted at the beginning of the project and revised by the piloting phase. We prepared two books in Turkish (Annex 1) and in English (Annex 2) for the professionals providing support"

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT:This project was conducted successfully as a response to the important tendency, marked in various reports of EU28 that by 2050 the number of physically disabled adults in Europe will have doubled to 40% of the total population or 60% of the age of youth (16-29) population. This project offered a unique opportunity for young people with disabilities to participate in peer mentoring activities. Youth peer mentoring is the process of matching peer mentors (selected among the same age of their mentee) with young people with disabilities who need to gain real work experience. This special and novel form of mentoring is providing a role model that can serve as a good practice example by the mentee. This goal has been accomplished through structured non-formal communication, mentoring which this project has implemented via a mobile application for peer mentoring implementation for Android device. In this setting, a young peer mentor (trained by youth workers) met the youth with disability at educational environment to ensure transition to workplace. This was conducted in the form of a one-on-one peer support including virtual sessions which captured the difficulties for those with mobility impairments which are disabled by the chances to move due to inaccessibility of the environment. During one-to-one peer mentoring the youth with disabilities were able to build self-confidence and social skills while also learning work habits, team work and communication with colleagues as well as gaining professional competencies. REACHED AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: - Developed novel youth peer mentoring pedagogy which was used by youth workers to train youth peer mentors to support youth with disabilities - Developed training tools and mobile app for distance peer mentoring guidance for youth mentors and youth mentees with disabilities - Strengthened collaboration among youth organisations, local authorities, chambers o f commerce, universities, NGOs and SMEs and organizations devoted to support employment of youth with disabilities - Fighting against social isolation and stigmatization towards people with disabilities - Opens new horizons for the efficient use of free time of youth. DEVELOPED INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS are:IO1: Youth Peer Mentors Pedagogy Framework - The guide consists of definition and concept of Youth Peer Mentor’s Framework, explanation with regards to the main principles of mentoring and with an introduction to the youth peer mentoring process. IO2: Job inclusion guidebook for young mentors - This guide served as a primary resource for individuals designing mentoring programs for youth, including youth with disabilities, in the transition phase to adulthood.IO3: Impact assessment youth peer mentoring tool - This guide presents the possibilities of assessing a project or programme, namely whether and to what extent the different objectives of the project have been achieved. Such assessment is considered as an evaluation of the project. IO4: Mobile youth peer mentoring application to facilitate distance mentoring guidance for youth with disabilities (Android based) - it allows distance youth peer mentoring communication in a safe environment. The mobile application ensured that people with different disabilities can all interact with the mobile application, using the supported Android assistive technologies. The mobile application is available in English, Bulgarian, Turkish and Romanian at Google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mypeermentor.mobile All outputs are available in English, Bulgarian, Turkish and Romanian languages at project website: https://www.mypeermentor.eu/intellectual-outputs and also uploaded onto Erasmus+ results platform. PARTICIPANTS IN PILOT IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROJECT:In the youth mentoring process overall 351 people have participated - 172 mentors and 179 mentees with disabilities (Turkey 114 Mentors and 113 Mentees; Bulgaria: 22 Mentors and 32 Mentees; Romania: 36 mentors and 34 mentees). REACHED IMPACT:Young mentors and mentees said that through this mentoring program they improved their personal qualities, soft skills and interpersonal skills. This peer mentoring program demonstrated a positive impact on the life of Turkish, Bulgarian and Romanian young people involved in the project, both mentors and mentees. Young mentors have understood the problems of young people with disabilities and have learned how to guide and to help them. The mentors encouraged and supported young mentees in their academic and other needs and goals for their growth. In general we may conclude that the pilot phase was finalized successfully and the indicators listed in the pilot plan were reached. Based on the feedback and comments we may conclude that MyPeerMentor outputs are useful, well structured, comprehensive and practically oriented.