On Monday 29 April, Associazione Joint hosted in Milan the closing event of the project ‘SCALE UP – Scaling-up Skills for Strengthening Inclusion and Youth Employability‘, developed within the framework of a Cooperation Partnership financed by the Erasmus+ programme, which involved a consortium of four associations from three different European countries:
- Esic,
- Developia,
- Associazione Joint and
- AY Institute.
SCALE-UP Final Event
The setting for the event was the new space inaugurated in Gratosoglio (Milan) in the autumn of 2023, Baroni 85, which hosts a variety of activities for young people in the neighbourhood on a daily basis, including many aimed at helping them find a job and improving their soft skills.
There was therefore no better place to hold the Scale-Up event, as the project was created to help young people approach the world of work with a greater awareness of their soft skills and the competences required in the hiring process.
Several young people from Spain, Italy and Lithuania, united by the desire to improve their skills before embarking on a job search, after taking part in four virtual webinars, attended the final event accompanied by the project managers who worked on the implementation of ‘Scale-Up’.
Activities
The day started with a “getting to know each-other”, a non-formal education activity managed by the Spanish association Developia, in order to give the participants from Spain, Italy and Lithuania a moment where they could meet and get to know each other better. Afterwards, ESIC’s project manager, Vicente Ferrero, presented the work carried out in the implementation of the project in the previous months and illustrated the data collected and analyzed during the work.
After the presentation, the participants were presented with four different workshop options, each run by a different partner, based on the online training modules carried out in the previous months.
The participants indicated their preference for the workshop based on the soft skills they wished to improve and then divided into four groups:
- digital communication,
- leadership,
- critical thinking and
- emotional intelligence.
During the activity, followed by the project managers, the young people reflected on the indicated topics and developed some results, which they then shared at the end of the workshop with the rest of the group, thus concluding the first part of the day.
In the early afternoon, the young people separated from the group in order to visit the city’s monuments, accompanied by the Italian group, while the project managers gathered for a final face-to-face meeting to discuss the steps to be taken in the following months and to reflect on how the project results had generated an impact on the different local communities.
Conclusion
The event, besides being a pleasant moment of residential meeting after a long series of virtual meetings, allowed for a closer relationship between the various partner associations and to discuss further projects and initiatives on which to collaborate in the future.
