JOB LABYRINTH

Applicant Organisation: Federazione CNOS-FAP
Partnership: 8 partners in Italy, Spain, Hungary, and Slovakia 
Objectives: Promote equal access to education and job opportunities and develop transversal skills of young people (aged 15-29) in Europe, through an innovative approach based on gamification techniques, integration, and employment services.

For further information visit the official website of the project.

JOB LABYRINTH - Fostering youth inclusive education and transition to work through game-based approaches integrating active employment and web-based guidance in Europe. - 2016-1-IT01-KA202-005493

Background
 The economic crisis has led to an increase in the gap between labour supply and demand.
The gap is even more significant for NEETs and vulnerable youth because of
- the low efficiency of ALMPs;
- the low capacity of Public Employment Centres and Vocational Training to intercept young people at risk and to give a concrete response to their needs;
- the low effectiveness of e-guidance services and youth centres to promote young people skills;
- the lack of synergy between public and private actors and of an integrated strategy to facilitate the transition of young people into the labour market;
- the little knowledge of young people about services provided by Public Employment Centres;
- the lack of involvement of young people during their orientation, training and job placement.

Overall Objective
To foster inclusive education, training and youth employability in Europe through enhanced access to training, and to more efficient and integrated guidance, public and private employment services particularly by disadvantaged youth.

Specific Objectives
• To strengthen the awareness of, and access to more integrated and effective active employment by young job-seekers and disadvantaged learners aged 18-29 in Europe.
• To develop learner-centered game-based e-solutions to raise youth awareness on ALMPs measures, on policies undertaken, and attract in particular NEETs and vulnerable youth.
• To increase cooperation between VET, employment and guidance in education, building staff capacities to deliver skills assessment, counseling, and qualification through “tailored services”.
• To mainstream in formal and non-formal settings (VET, education, youth work, public-private JPOs) e-services guidance, moving from EU-funded best practices, integrating them into the JOB Labyrinth game and Community of Practices to enable beneficiaries’ skills as active job seekers.
• To develop and disseminate tools, guidelines, blended paths to build the capacities of EU actors on how to use e-tools and enable clients to access services and information.

In order to achieve these objectives, the Job Labyrinth project will develop, using gamification methodologies, an interactive game with which the user will be able to create his own avatar and begin a path to acquire skills and information about the local labour market and the bodies providing services to meet his working needs (public/private employment services, CNOS-FAP JSOs, youth centres…). In addition, through the game the beneficiary will receive support to write a successful CV and create his personal profile. Also, a network among public and private employment centres, VET, youth centres will be created in order to reach more young people, especially the most disadvantaged ones.  

Partenariato

Output

The project involves the realisation of seven outputs, each of them is coordinated by a leader who, in cooperation with the other partners, contributes to achieving the project objectives.

O1 - Analysis, and selection of existing good practices and attractive ICT and game-based e-tools to stimulate active employment.
Output Description: The comparative analysis should gather all best practices, methodological approaches and tools successfully implemented in Europe. The outcome produced will enable partners to build up the backbone framework of the Job Labyrinth Game.
Activity Leading Organisation: Risorse HR

O2 - Repository/database on youth active employment and ALMPs, services, actors and initiatives were undertaken in the partner countries.
Output Description: The repository will constitute an integrated portfolio of information, services and guidelines to be further included into the Job Labyrinth Game, able to stimulate young people active employment skills and motivations and offering them an integrated overview of VET/educational/employment-oriented services.
Activity Leading Organisation: Noviter

O3 - Capacity building modules
Output Description: The output will be a set of learning modules, available in 5 languages and easily downloadable from the platform, specifically addressed to train teachers and trainers involved in VET/school and youth learning environments institutions on best practices, methodologies, and approaches.
Activity Leading Organisation: BKS Uspech

O4 – JOB LAB technological framework
Output Description: This output relates to the development of the technological framework needed to embed the web-based guidance tools selected in O1, a database of O2, and with the design and alpha testing of the game-based tool which will be further developed, tested and integrated into O5.
Activity Leading Organisation: iTStudy

O5 – JOB LAB Community of practices
Output Description: The Community of Practices will be the main means of the project, built up through a thorough network building process to call up public and private providers and to integrate their enhanced and improved services for guidance, counselling, and job placement, particularly addressed to vulnerable youth.
Activity Leading Organisation: Federazione CNOS-FAP

O6 – E-toolkit of user-friendly Job Labyrinth packages
Output Description: The final toolkit will be aimed at offering practitioner, staff and operators of the whole range of centres and bodies who can be part of the Job Labyrinth network, an easy to use guide and a tailored package of tested e-guidance and awareness-raising game-based tools to address vulnerable youth, to guide them towards VET and educational paths or to facilitate their transition to the labour market. A customized version of the toolkit will be developed to be suitable for dissemination to EU databases and networks identified, to be fully exploitable via smartphones and tablets and to facilitate their dissemination through social learning.
Activity Leading Organisation: Risorse HR

O7 – Impact assessment and final recommendations
Output Description: Final recommendations will be mostly addressed to key policy actors, EU, regional and national bodies and networks identified in the dissemination plan, in order to raise their awareness on the relevance and impact of the proposed integrated approach to ALMPs, and on the effectiveness of the tools and other outputs produced as a means to intercept vulnerable youth and to foster their social inclusion and active employment.
Activity Leading Organisation:Noviter

Click here for the Gantt chart of the project to check the duration of Outputs.

Events

The Job Labyrinth project has been officially launched during the Kick-off Meeting hosted by Federación de Plataformas Sociales Pinardi 7th to 9th November, during which the partners of the project have received all information and guidelines to manage activities.

During the same week, in conjunction with the Kick-off Meeting, Federación de Plataformas Sociales Pinardi has hosted also the first Peer Learning during which a group of experts from each partner country has discussed the various training methodologies used in their different settings, in particular focusing on the characteristics of the target group of the Pinardi Federation, with the aim of creating training modules applicable in the local realities of the different partners.

The group of experts met again in Turin, from 20th -24th February. During the second Peer Learning hosted by the Piedmont Region headquarters of the CNOS-FAP Federation, experts have deepened the theme of skills recognition acquired in non-formal and informal settings. 

The partner BKS Uspech from 12th to 16th June has hosted in Bratislava the second Project Meeting, during which the first level of the game has been presented, the third Peer Learning during which the competence assessment methodologies and the main e-guidance tools used in Slovakia has been discussed, and the first Dissemination Event (during the FECBOP Event).

For further information contact the Project Manager Ivan Toscano i.toscano@cnos-fap.it