Call for mobility and training calls in other Erasmus + countries. The calls for tenders for 2019 have already been published: the first deadline is scheduled for 5 February 2019 and the last for 1 October 2019; funds for next year are equal to 2,7 billion (from 150 thousand to one million for each project). To contribute to the Europe 2020 strategy, education, training, youth and sport programs will be supported, with various deadlines. The announcements, and all the dates to access them, have recently been published on the Erasmus + official page.
The assumptions of the program are very clear: on the one hand, almost 6 million young Europeans are unemployed, with levels exceeding 50% in some countries. At the same time they register over 2 million job vacancies and a third of employers report difficulties to hire personnel with the required qualifications. This demonstrates that there are significant skills shortages in Europe.
The objectives to be achieved are therefore precise: to improve the professional training system; create a European Learning Area; optimizing the level of key competencies and skills through cooperation between training institutions and enterprises and; promote quality, innovation, excellence and internationalization for education and training.
These objectives can be achieved through three key actions: Key action 1, i.e. exchanges abroad for people of all ages; Key action 2, concerning agreements of an economic nature between several bodies for the achievement of common objectives, aimed at creating joint initiatives, experimenting with innovative methodologies and exchanging know-how; Key action 3, aimed at supporting policy reform and implemented on the basis of context analysis, exchange of good practices and introduction of transparency tools.
The Erasmus+ official page highlights something new this year:
For the first time, the Program grants funding not only to universities and training institutes, but also to innovative partnerships, the so-called “Knowledge Alliances” e “Sector Skills Alliances”, which will create synergies between the worlds of education and the world of work by enabling higher education institutions, trainers and businesses to foster innovation and entrepreneurship as well as to develop new curricula and qualifications to fill gaps in skills ability.
Entities contributing to this program must be active in the field of education, training and youth or in other socio-economic sectors. The number of countries and organizations to be involved will need to be presented in partnership and will vary according to the individual measure. The centralized actions are administered by the European Commission, through the EACEA and the decentralized ones by the National Agencies: in Italy this task is assigned to Indire (National Institute of Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research), Inapp (National Institute for the Analysis of public) and Ang (National Youth Agency). The application forms are completed in electronic format to allow the information to be transferred to the Agencies that deal with it. In order to be able to participate in a project proposal, Agencies must have a Pic, i.e. a financial identification code that is obtained by registering on the Funding & tenders portal.
The funding will be granted to the companies involved in Key Action 2, the so-called < >, < > and < > to create partnerships between the worlds of education and work, allowing to promote innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and also to create new training programs and curricula to fill gaps in the labor market. This program gives company employees the opportunity to expand their skills, abilities and knowledge through mobility programs that include training periods and job shadowing at training institutions and/or companies in EU countries.
