Type of Project: Funded project Model project Transnational project
AIDA - Work and Integration through Exchange Schwerin

The project "Work and Integration through Exchange Schwerin" (AIDA-Verbund Schwerin) offers a total of 130 young people with disabilities from the West Mecklenburg region the opportunity to improve their career opportunities and access to the open labor market by participating in a "Future and Work Camp" or a two-month internship in jobs in the construction, tourism, and gardening and landscaping sectors between 2011 and 2014. In doing so, the project focuses on two target groups. In one sub-project, 60 students from the graduating classes will travel to Vilnius in Lithuania during the summer vacations and complete intercultural mobility and career orientation training as part of a "Future and Work Camp." This is a combination of practical work in a non-profit project in Vilnius, learning arrangements to reflect on the experience gained. The stay abroad for the students is complemented by intercultural training, language learning and offers of sports and cultural leisure activities. The students actively prepare for their stay abroad by taking part in a skills analysis, mobility training with an intensive language course, and country and intercultural learning units. In a second sub-project, 70 unemployed young adults at the interface between vocational training and job: take part in a two-month internship in Estonia, Denmark or France, where - supported by our foreign partners - they will live, learn and work independently. These groups of participants prepare for their stay in Germany by completing profiling, taking part in internship-related learning instruction, and actively participating in mobility training with an intensive language course and country-specific and intercultural learning units. The content and objectives of the internship are defined in advance with the active participation of the participants. When selecting participants and offering internships abroad, their social skills and professional knowledge as well as the requirements of the company are taken into account in order to ensure that the placement is a perfect fit. The goals of the internship are to apply the professional knowledge from the vocational training, to gain professional experience, to strengthen the willingness for mobility, the additional teaching of country-specific qualification contents, as well as the strengthening of basic skills. During an acclimatization phase abroad, the participants visit the potential internship companies, take part in trial work days to get to know them for the first time and to deepen the internship relationship. The participants have a contact person on site during the whole time. These two subprojects are accompanied by an exchange of experience and knowledge between the transnational and German partners. For this purpose, there will be two study visits of labor market and education experts to Schwerin. As part of the cooperation with the Baltic partners, a workshop in Lithuania is also planned, which will be attended by labor market experts and representatives of the participating self-help organizations from West Mecklenburg. The final conference in 2014 will focus primarily on issues of transfer, quality development and the effectiveness of transnational exchange projects. Transnational partners of the AIDA Network Schwerin are the Lithuanian Youth Center from Lithuania, Eurocircle Marseille from France, Salo Baltic International from Estonia and the Skagen Education and Development Center from Denmark. Source: Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Homepage IdA - Integration through Exchange, http://www.ida.de