GAIA (POR) – Today, 01 June 2023, the first transnational meeting of the project “Podcast for a Future Without Borders Skills”, acronym “PFWB”, is held in Vila Nova de Gaia or simply Gaia, a city located south of Porto, Portugal. This initiative has been approved by the competent Erasmus Plus National Agency in Portugal as action no. 2022-2-PT01-KA210-VET-000097749, within the Erasmus Plus KA210-VET programme – Small-scale partnerships in vocational education and training. The meeting will serve the three project partners – D. Sancho Ensino, Lda. Escola Profissional do Infante (project coordinator – Portugal), Innovation Footprint (Greece) and EURO-NET (Italy) – to define the activities to be developed by 1 May 2025.
The project aims to: improve the employability of students (many of whom have fewer opportunities) through non-formal education; use technologies intelligently and increase children’s digital mindset (critical understanding and use of technological tools); improve young people’s awareness of the present and future through the exploration of themes such as Europe, digital and environmental transitions, work and transversal skills; acquire or increase a series of technical skills such as expressiveness, active listening, relational dialogue, public speaking, audio and video editing and post-production, in order to develop – even after the project – work and entrepreneurial activities; acquire or increase a series of soft skills such as adaptability, resilience, critical thinking, teamwork, time management, leadership and problem solving and, finally, improve the training of trainers and educators to broaden the impact of the teaching methodology developed in the project, multiplying its potential beneficiaries.
The objectives of “PFWB” arise from the consideration that global crises and uncertainties, combined with rapid changes in the labor market, risk generating anxiety, fear, frustration, disillusionment, disengagement and anger in young people, also because mainstream narratives tend to very often represent problems and rarely, instead, to make people reflect on the opportunities that arise from changes. The project aims for the 90 young participants envisaged in the project proposal to be able to obtain, through their proactive participation in the activities, personal growth, thus becoming protagonists of their own future through the development and acquisition of transversal skills implemented through the creation of podcasts.
At the same time, the initiative is also addressed to innovative trainers who are willing to adopt this non-formal education methodology in their institutions, thanks to a video guide directed to them that will serve to transfer all the training contents, through a specific online e-learning platform, where it will be possible to find all the materials produced in the project and follow the related courses.
