WAKE UP Your Vocation

A new Erasmus+ project is launched for educational guidance for teachers to improve the future employment of their students.

WAKE UP YOUR VOCATION is an Erasmus+ strategic partnership that involves more than 30 educational centres, 600 young people, parents and public and private entities in order to reduce the gap between the educational system and the labour market.

This innovative initiative, which unites Spain, Italy, Belgium and Croatia, begins its first phase with an analysis of the possibilities of insertion of young people, between 12 and 18 years old, to provide their teachers with the resources and basic skills in career guidance that will allow them to guide their students in the decision about their professional future.

WAKE UP YOUR VOCATION is a European initiative integrated into the Erasmus+ 2021-2027 program, which seeks to reduce the gap between the educational system and the current labour market. More than 30 centres and 600 students will participate in this project, which provides young people between 12 and 18 years of age with the necessary preparation in terms of employability skills and job orientation.

The program involves educational centres, both teachers and young people, as well as parents and guardians and public and private entities. The objective is to analyse the reality of the young group regarding their professional future, find out the solutions to break the gap between their education and their entry into the labour market and establish a correct strategy to achieve their insertion.

This European training project is led by the Santa María la Real Foundation, through its Area of ​​Employment and Entrepreneurship (Spain), and together with it the Agenzia regionale per il lavoro la formazione e l'accreditamento (Italy), Goethe-Institut e.V. (Belgium) and Zaklada Znanje na djelu (Croatia).

WAKE UP YOUR VOCATION studies and promotes general and transversal skills, without focusing on a specific profession or skill. Through the methodology used, students are guided not only in the type of work they can do, but also in the professional profile they want to become.

Teacher training

The innovative nature of this project lies in the methodology developed since, although the students are the ones who ultimately benefit from the program, the initiative is focused on training their teachers. Therefore, the skills and knowledge acquired will remain in the educational centres as an added value, even after the group of advised students has completed their training at the centre.

Throughout 2022, the first phase of the project will be developed, which seeks to understand the vision and expectations of young people, their teachers and parents or guardians about the possibilities of labor insertion, and will identify the sources of information that influence them to make decisions about their career path. The results of this first phase will make it possible to provide the teaching team with career guidance skills through an innovative methodology to help students design their academic and training itinerary based on their knowledge.

Digital, equal and sustainable Europe

Promoting the collaborative work of young people through the development of intercultural skills and critical thinking is one of the objectives pursued by this European project, which encourages its teachers to form an active work group with their students and assume their role as part of the engine that will lead to a digital, equal and sustainable Europe in the coming decades.

In addition, it seeks to make both students and their families aware of the reality of the labour market in Europe, the new skills demanded in digitalized sectors and that support sustainability, as well as the academic or professional training options available to them. In this sense, it will bring students and the private sector closer to generate a better understanding and connection of their realities, especially in rural areas, and will promote social inclusion through equality, the promotion of digitization and environmental challenges.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

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