ACROSS

Appraising transversal skills in green jobs for employability of youth and workers in restructuring processes.

The project intends to strengthen the capacity of VET and labor market organizations to reduce the gaps between available skills and labor demand and to deliver innovative tools to bridge such gaps focusing on two main tenets: sustainable development in the so-called green economies and the appraising of transversal skills as portable skills in times of high unemployment and restructuring.

The project intends, in line with the EU 2020 Strategy’s concept of “sustainable growth”, to approach “green” as a set of sustainable productive activities across sectors rather than a sector per se, & “green jobs” as a modality – based on a balanced mix of soft and hard skills – to deal with structural changes and sustainable restructuring of sectors as a consequence of globalization and needs for more environmentally –friendly approaches to productivity.

ACROSS promotes the concept of portable skills and it also includes people at risk of exclusion in the target of final beneficiaries. The project also responds to the 4th Priority area 2012-14: “Transversal key competences, entrepreneurship education, […] innovative learning environments”. It is developed to contribute to the Strategic Partnership’s objectives, by improving the employability in cross-sectorial green economies, building tools to assess transversal and portable skills, and including such tools in the provision of career guidance, counselling and support services along the whole cycle of human capital development.

Project type

Erasmus + Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices – Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training.
Domain: green jobs, youth
Concerned territory: Lille (FR), Zagreb (HR), Lisbon (PT), Stuttgart (DE), Venice (IT), Brussels (BE), Tietgen (DE), Utrecht (NL), Emilia-Romagna (IT), Rauma (FI).
Duration : 01/01/2015 – 31/12/2017 (36 months)

Project leader :

Tandem Plus (France)

Objectives

The project aims to obtain:

  1. smart growth by providing operational tools to increase employability in emerging sectors to counter restructuring effects;
  2. sustainable growth, by focusing on the green economy, jobs and production methods in different sectors, including tools for valuing existing skills; I
  3. inclusive growth, in line with the Agenda for new skills and Jobs, “helping people adapt to a changing labour market and make successful career shifts” and of the European platform against poverty, by “mobilising support to help people … get training and help to find a job …”.

Project activities

Although there is no universal definition of “green skills” or even “green jobs”, the need for green skills is considered critical to support and develop a “sustainable and resource-efficient society”( CEDEFOP). The project has identified some specific needs that refer to its target groups, namely:

  1. the transition to new forms of “green” economy is not easily foreseeable but necessary to the fields of education, training, employment and business support services as they depend on the ways in which “traditional” sectors approach their greening process. Tools to identify and forecast VET needs, based on trends and evidence based indicators observed in the practice of regional or local markets, economic contexts and policy, technological, development and social factors that can influence such shift are crucial.
  2. the weak capability of micro SMEs to identify not only products, but human capital with suitable skills to transit to a greener approach, to compete and to thrive in a changing environment mirrors the capacity to provide quality support and learning tools and services to identify, assess and create “green profiles”, capitalizing transversal skills acquired in other contexts, focusing on some key skills at different levels of occupational profiles in relevant sectors; 
  3. high need for flexible (on-the-job, practical) sound methods for skills appraisal and development available in the portfolio of VET providers;
  4. the effort to develop tools for green skills must not be a separate policy from wider frameworks, but integral part of them, & communication line with policy makers, at local, national and EU level must remain open.

To respond to these needs, ACROSS has identified the following specific objectives:

  1. To expand and improve the knowledge of current practice on ACROSS’ two tenets to provide partners and other stakeholders with concrete methodologies/indicators to plan and deliver practical guidance, counseling and coaching methods/ policies formulated on quality benchmark models ;
  2. To provide multi-stakeholder accepted analysis of issues and innovative, blended solutions as a set of concrete tools for professional development pertaining to the ACROSS skills and jobs nexus in greening sectors, to be streamlined in wider VET frameworks; 
  3. To test and transfer ACROSS tools and strategies in order to reinforce the partner alliance to allow for a better sustainability and exploitation after the project’s life and to other contexts in line with local and EU policies and measures
  4. To make the project’s results and outputs accessible to the highest possible number of actors, stakeholders and beneficiaries by means of accessible ICT.

 

Partners

Transnational timeline

  • February 2015: Kickoff meeting – Lille, France
  • September 2015: Transnational meeting – Odense, Denmark
  • March 2016: Transnational meeting – Lisbon, Portugal
  • September 2016: Transnational meeting – Venice, Italy
  • April 2017: Transnational meeting – Zagreb, Croatia
  • October 2017: Final conference – Brussels, Belgium