Type of Project: Funded project Transnational project Model project
Horizons

The project 'Horizons' is designed for disadvantaged and learning-disabled adolescents who were not able to find a workplace or a place for their professional education before. The project is realised in cooperation with the job.com, the local agency of the district Düren.

The project is divided in two parts:
Those adolescents who already hold an appropiate interest and orientation regarding their future job gain practical experiences in companies in Krakow (Poland), that correspond to their expectations, for one month.

Those adolescents whose interest and orientation concerning their future job is not that advanced afforest areas in Marathon in Greece that have been destroyed by forest fires and work together on the basics of their career planing during a month-long stay. The visitation of different companies, training centres and technical schools help to form their own expectations and interest of a future career. These accompanying excursions to companies increase the closeness to individual career aspirations. The experiences in landscape building add the ability to rank the own strength and capacity so that the career choice of everyone is stimulated. All adolescents gain additional skills through their experiences in foreign companies and especially through the improvement of their social skills in the framework of group activities, which supports the access to the job market as well. The participation in the local cultural offer gives them an understanding of the foreign culture and improves their intercultural tolerance. The last constraints are overcome by collective athletic activities in cooperation with adolescents of the sister country.

The linguistic and cultural basis is achieved during a preparatory course of two months that also supports cohesiveness and those technical abilities that either correspond to landscape building or functions of the practical course. Our partners abroad – OHP Malopolska in Poland and the community Marathon in Greece – introduce their country and their organisation to the adolescents during this prepatory phase. They use this stay in Düren to communicate with job market experts in the region of Cologne – Aachen. These are in addition to the national co-operation partners (Sozialwerk Dürener Christen and Evangelische Gemeinde) also the career officers of the Arbeitsagentur, the local educational institution and guilds, schools and companies which get involved with the education of disadvantaged adolescents.

There is a visitation of German job market experts in Marathon and Krakow in return whenever adolescents stay there. Two workshops of experts in the middle and at the end of the project offer all national and transnational partners the opportunity to exchange the experiences and to reflect the project. Thematic aspects are the encouragement of integration of disadvantaged and disabled people into the job market, especially against the background of the shortage of qualified employees and the development of European ideas with adolescents with small experiences of mobility (for example cross border opening of the job market, lifelong learning, encouragement of tolerance and exchange of experiences).