New horizons for VET in response to covid pandemic: PRODIGE kicks off

What is PRODIGE?

PRODIGE stands for PROmote DIGitalisation for Education & training and it’s a cooperation project for innovation and exchange of good practices (Key Action 2).

The project has been officially launched with the kick off meeting on the 17th and 23rd of June which was held online.

PRODIGE will allow 6 partners from 5 different EU countries to work together for 2 years with the common goal of strengthening the European dimension of VET centers nowadays strongly affected by the circumstances created by the COVID 19 pandemic. How? By innovating the internationalisation strategies of VET centers thanks to the use of digital tools and to the development of teachers’ digital competences.

More specifically, project partner have committed to:

• innovate learning internationalization and to make digital some of the activities linked to VET students mobility and to its preparation, monitoring and follow up;
• to build capacity to implement tailor-made, safer and higher quality international students’ mobility experiences, enhancing cooperation between VET schools and families
• to increase teachers’ competences to develop internationalization at home activities and to deal with virtual and blended mobility

Who are the other partners of the project?

SEPR (France), coordinator of PRODIGE, is a school for professional trainings and counts more than 4000 students. For more than 30 years the school has been implementing an international policy in order to enhance its mobility and enable each of its students to live an experience abroad.

UNISER (ITALY), is an international co-operative based in Bologna (center-north of Italy), which supports the internationalization of education institutions in Europe. Its core activity is the design and organisation of experiences abroad for schools and training centers wishing to integrate mobility in their curricula, offering internships in Europe both to their learners and staff. This work aims at turning Erasmus into the future of education and training systems to make learning mobility a part of the educational programs everywhere by facilitating its processes.

BEZIRKSREGIERUNG KÖLN (Germany) The department for EU projects in the Cologne Government Regional Office /Germany belongs to the school supervisory division for VET colleges which is responsible for all 57 vocational colleges in the Cologne Region. For these colleges EUGES provides a general service with respect to all questions of European activities and internationalization strategies.

SCUOLA CENTRALE FORMAZIONE (Italy) is a non-profit organisation recognized by the Ministry of Labour joining together 47 organisations managing 106 VET centres distributed in 11 different regions. SCF works primarily to offer a representative support and an effective coordinating action to all associates, with a specific interest on methodologies, evaluation, innovation and transfer of best practices.

INSTITUT ESTEVE TERRADAS I ILLA (Spain) is a public institution, founded in 1975. It is a secondary education institute technical and professional. Ins. Esteve Terradas collaborates with about 250 companies and has about 1600 students and 160 teachers.

LUKSIA (Finland) offers vocational qualifications and tailored personnel training to meet the needs of individuals, private companies and public institutions. Each year Luksia trains approximately 3,000 vocational students for full vocational qualifications, as well as

hundreds of young people and migrants for preparatory vocational training, and adults in short professional courses.

MFR DU BERGERACOIS (France) is a training organisation founded in 1959 specialising in “school-company sandwich courses” . It is a “Loi 1901” association made up of students’ parents, former students’ parents and course tutors. There are 450 MFR in France and more than 1000 around the world.

What are the next steps?
Project partners will all meet in person in Barcelona in November 2021 for the 2nd Transnational Meeting to evaluate the work done together, exchange updates on the IOs development and to organize the upcoming activities.