One of the main strategic objectives of the EU education and training policy is to facilitate the maximum mobility of students and trainers, as well as reduce the possible obstacles that could hinder it.
Mobility in training has a very positive impact on human capital: it allows students to acquire new knowledge and skills, increases their employability and makes them more prone to an international professional career.
Erasmus+ is the EU program that seeks to boost job perspectives and personal development, in addition to helping our education, training and youth systems to provide education and learning that provide people with the necessary work market skills of current and future society. This programme has an indicative financial envelope of €14,774 billion. Of this amount, almost €3 billion is assigned to VET over the period 2014-2020. Every year, around 130,000 VET learners and 20,000 VET staff benefit from Erasmus+ mobility opportunities. In addition, almost 500 VET projects each year are financed under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships.
Vocational Education and Training (VET) is a term used internationally to describe education and training arrangements designed to prepare people for work or to improve the knowledge and skills of people already working.
Mobility in VET brings obvious value by helping young people to open their minds, expand their social, professional and transferable skills, and develop a taste for innovation and initiative and a sense of European citizenship.
It is a way to improve the overall results of organizations involved in these practices, creating lasting internationalization strategies and, at the same time, also helping companies find the appropriate skills that they need to increase their competitiveness. Long-term internships abroad provide greater added value to students with regard to the development of specific work skills and even greater knowledge of the language, culture and work environment of the foreign country, which favours their employability.
European Projects: ESMOVIA and VET
One of the key activities of ESMOVIA is to promote and participate as a partner in different European Projects for the cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices. Our main interest are Strategic Partnership projects in the field of education, training, and youth. Topics we usually deal with are Mobility, Youth, Entrepreneurship, Employability, Soft and Hard Skills development, Information and Communication Technologies and Integration.
In the recent years, ESMOVIA, as head of Spanish consortia of VET schools, has been the promoter of an Erasmus+ KA1 project for students and 2 Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnerships:
We have also organized several events that have taken place last month of October: The Erasmus Days and the European Vocational Skills Week.
In occasion of the Erasmus Days, we organized an event to celebrate Europe and its youth: Erasmus+ Nice to Meet YOU(th)! In ESMOVIA we like creating extraordinary life experiences and supporting young people in their process of becoming more skilled, more independent and more European. That is why quality time will be dedicated to discover what the new generations think and expect from Erasmus+ programme, as well as their interests and culture. We presented to the public the opportunities of changing lives and opening minds that this programme continues offering to the youth from all over Europe since 1987.
Concerning the European Vocational Skills Week, ESMOVIA organized the TECH VET, an activity that aims to narrow the distance between VET students and technology, a priority of the Erasmus+ programme in order to open new possibilities for the future.