TPM of Work Inclusion Held with Project Partners in Spain

Seville, September 19 (Afridat/OurVoice): A two days transnational project planning meeting of the project WINC 2021 was held successfully in Seville on the 18th and 19th September.    

Innovative Validation Acquired Experience Methodology for Immigration is the vision of the project WINC 2021 and being implemented with the partnership of Euroform RFS from Italy, Osengo from France, 1st E. K. Pervezas from Greece, Afridat Innovation from Germany and Incoma from Spain. 

The TPM was addressed, among others, by Mariana Restrepo and Juan Guerrero from Incoma, Dr Abdul Hai from Afridat Innovation UG, Ilario Lo Sardo and Francesco Argentino from Euroform RFS, Nikolaos Sotiriou and Georgios Kotzamouratoglou from 1st E. K. Prevezas and Mathieu Shaefer from Osengo. Moreover, Segun Ajibola and Daniel Ola from Afridat Innovation UG presented and discussed the significant features of the WINAPP through online participation.

The representatives from the partner organisations and development experts critically analysed and evaluated the Training Modules and the new mobile application WINAPP developed under this project. The newly conceived VAE methodology will allow a fast recognition of qualifications, experiences and skills with a consequent improvement of the working conditions of validators and of migrants, allowing them to aspire to better personal and professional conditions, minimizing the possibility of remaining on the margins of the social life of the country of arrival.

The development experts discussed the inclusion of migrants in vocational education and training pathways. The participants discussed possible applications of the project results from the point of view of professionals working with migrants, which resulted in a rich exchange of experiences and opinions.

The project aims at meeting the needs of certification operators (validators), or future validators, working in adult education institutions to learn new methods in order to be able to certify migrants’ experiences, qualifications and skills and, consequently, to allow the latter a better socio-occupational integration. In this regard, the creation of a new instrument based on the national experiences of Validation of Acquired Experience (VAE) and supported by technological tools capable of overcoming geographical and spatial constraints appears to be an optimal solution capable of mitigating the current absence of uniformity in the certification of qualifications and skills in the European Union.

Experts opined, “The WINC2021 project demonstrates the potential of collaboration between different disciplines and sectors to address complex challenges and promote social integration and inclusion. With the new WIN-VAE methodology, the WIN-Training e-learning course and the WIN-APP, practitioners involved in validation processes will have practical and innovative tools at their disposal to support migrants in the process of validating their previous experiences.“

In the recent survey conducted under the European project, it was found that migrants who arrive in European countries often struggle to integrate into the social and occupational system of their country of arrival because they are confronted with a lack of univocal and adequate tools to meet their expectations. Most of the time, they enter the labour market in sectors that are different from the ones in which they worked in their country of origin because they are unable to demonstrate that they have previously acquired certain specific skills.

It is therefore necessary to create new and effective tools for the socio-occupational inclusion of migrants starting from the analysis of the current validation experiences in the countries where the migratory phenomenon has become prominent, with the aim of creating a shared validation tool that can be used by the operators working in adult training institutions.