PARTNERS
low-tec gemeinnützige Arbeitsmarktförderungs gesellschaft Düren mbH (Germany)
low-tec gemeinnützige Arbeitsmarktförderungsgesellschaft Düren mbH is a non-profit organisation founded in 1996 as a daughter general partner of the protestant community in Düren.
EUROTRAINING EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION (Greece)
Eurotraining is an educational organisation of national scope, specialised in the provision of VET courses at tertiary level, as well as various other training opportunities for adults. Its main objective is to bridge the gap between labour market demand and offer, thus its services are highly adaptive to reflect the constantly changing circumstances.
CEPROF – Centros Escolares De Ensino Profissional Lda (Portugal)
CEPROF stands for „Centros Escolares de Ensino Profissional“, which means „VET School Centres. It is an SME constituted in 1991 specifically for the creation of the Vocational School of Espinho (ESPE – Escola Profissional de Espinho) – also created in 1991 and is one of the oldest VET schools in Portugal (until 2004 all VET schools
APSU – Associação Portuguesa De Start-ups (Portugal)
The Portuguese Association of Start-Ups (APSU) is an association that brings the Portuguese Start- Ups together in order to create synergies that will ultimately support the implementation of these companies. In order to do that, APSU supports in a multitude of critical areas for the starting companies.
die Berater Unternehmensberatungs GmbH (Austria)
The core competence of “die Berater” Unternehmensberatungs GmbH is adult education and training. die Berater® offers holistic consulting, coaches employees and managers, and is specialized in soft skills, language and IT seminars.
low-tec gemeinnützige Arbeitsmarktförderungsgesellschaft Düren mbH (Germany)
low-tec gemeinnützige Arbeitsmarktförderungsgesellschaft Düren mbH is a non-profit organisation founded in 1996 as a daughter general partner of the protestant community in Düren. We offer for individuales work training possibilities in cooperation with the employment agencies and regional companies. low-tec supports and trains low-skilled and disabled people in vocational meausres on the process of choosing professions on getting launched into jobs or occupation requiring formal training. We deal with national and transnational projects creating opportunities to qualify disadvantaged and unemployed people. Several projects as IdA- integration through exchange or Interreg support the individuals to get integrated into the training or into labour market through transnational mobility and work experience abroad. low-tec has about 200 employees working at three locations in Düren, Aachen and Eschweiler. low-tec qualifies yearly more than 1500 persons for the labour market in the age 16-60+ in different sectors. Many unemployed people in the region of Düren, Eschweiler and Aachen have difficulties to be integrated into the job market, to find a job or vocational training. By qualifiying youngsters and adults to develop social and professional skills, to improve their self-esteem and the motivation, low-tec is very succesful by integration of participants into the labour market. low-tec promotes different types of education and the culture of personal developement, physical and moral, proactive attitude and participatory culture, culture integration in diversity, equal opportunities and globalization, in terms of respect for identity. Our organisation embraces diversity and multiculturalism and our work serves local community and promotes values like tolerances, respect and is focused on the needs of others. Local partners are job centers, the municipality of Düren, Aachen and Eschweiler, economic development institutions, the university RWTH in Aachen, entrepreneurs, industry and trade chambers, ministries etc.
· EUROTRAINING EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION (Greece)
Eurotraining is an educational organisation of national scope, specialised in the provision of VET courses at tertiary level, as well as various other training opportunities for adults. Its main objective is to bridge the gap between labour market demand and offer, thus its services are highly adaptive to reflect the constantly changing circumstances. At the core of its activities, Eurotraining strives for inclusive education, particularly caring for people in vulnerable positions, through its participation in both national and EU-funded Projects. Long before COVID-19, the organisation had already incorporated a variety of digital tools in its provided training offers, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their place of residence within the country, is able to attend courses. Today, Eurotraining is considered a leading VET centre in terms of digital transformation of education and training, since its innovative methods are widely recognised at national and European level. The organisation’s great impact on Greece’s VET sector is to a large extend due to the wide variety of training offers developed and provided. Among these, some of the most notable are the courses in: informatics and IT science, business management and entrepreneurship, environmental science and energy, tourism and hospitality services, culinary arts, educational science, and others. It also provides tailor made courses for professionals, including training for adults’ trainers, seminars on food hygiene and safety, and training for Data Protection Officers. Every year, more than 2.000 trainees choose Eurotraining for quality and applicable education and training. Through its activities at national, European and international level, Eurotraining has developed a vast network of collaborators, including training organisations and Universities, NGOs and other social actors, public authorities, research institutes, labour market associations and chambers, SMEs, foundations, and others. Eurotraining’s facilities (headquarters in Athens, branches in Thessaloniki and Volos) are functionally designed to create a friendly, inclusive environment that facilitates both learning and social interaction. Its infrastructure includes, among others, conventional and virtual classrooms, laboratories for different specialisations (e.g. IT, graphic design, culinary arts, educational science, etc.), equipment for people with special abilities, libraries, and child care facilities. The organisation is certified by the National Certification Center of Lifelong Vocational Training, supervised by the Ministry of Education, while it has developed and is implemented a quality management system that fully responds to the requirements of the standards ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013.
CEPROF – Centros Escolares De Ensino Profissional Lda (Portugal)
CEPROF stands for “Centros Escolares de Ensino Profissional”, which means “VET School Centres. It is an SME constituted in 1991 specifically for the creation of the Vocational School of Espinho (ESPE – Escola Profissional de Espinho) – also created in 1991 and is one of the oldest VET schools in Portugal (until 2004 all VET schools in Portugal were private). The Portuguese legislation determines that the Private VET schools must be created by a person, enterprise, association or an international organization that assumes the legal fiscal and financial responsibilities of the school (DL 92/2014). Therefore, under these legal contains, CEPROF was created as an enterprise whose unique business activity is to own, manage and legally represent ESPE and for this reason CEPROF falls in the national legal framework of the “institutions of public interest” (DL 92/2014). ESPE/CEPROF has the permission to be constituted as VET school “Autorização de Funcionamento nr 27” and is accredited by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. ESPE/CEPROF focuses mostly on the areas of Tourism, Gastronomy and on Mechatronics and is regularly national champion in school robotics (https://espe.pt/competicoes-escolares/robotica/ ). The degrees of Gastronomy include the degree in Cooking and Baking and in Restaurant and Bartender. For these VET degrees ESPE/CEPROF has been implementing various multidisciplinary school projects, as to set-up a self-sustainable hydroponic culture to supply the cooking classes with fresh vegetables and to set up a 3D printing technique of eatable objects for the bakery classes. Espinho is a town with many socio-economic difficulties, due to its structurally high unemployment rate. It is one of the 20 Portuguese continental towns (among more than 300) with the highest unemployment rate (Pordata 2019), despite the steadily improvement of the unemployment rate since 2011, when it was the Portuguese town with the highest unemployment rate, at the peak of the economic crisis. ESPE/CEPROF also embeds a “Centre for vocational guidance and counselling” through its Centre for Qualifications (Centro Qualifica). This centre provides not only personalised vocational guidance and counselling by technicians of this Centre (usually Psychologists), but also validation and certification of professional competences of people over 21 years old. In this process of validation and certification of professional competences the trainees are coached for the elaboration of a portfolio in which they show their professional competences, and are forward to further training to complement the missing competences. By the conclusion of this process, the trainees can have their professional competences certified with a VET diploma until level 4, recognized by the Ministry of Education. CERTIFICATIONS AND HONOURS: – CEPROF holds the European Quality Assurance in VET (EQAVET) certification nr 179/2020 – CEPROF was an official partner of the European Vocational Skills Week 2020 of the European Commission. – The Pedagogic Plan of CEPROF was considered to be the 3rd best pedagogic plan for youth education in 2020, scoring 93% points, in a national contest from the Ministry of Education on the “application of the European Social Fund (ESF) in favour of strengthening the qualification and employability of young people and adults in Portugal.”
APSU – Associação Portuguesa De Start-ups (Portugal)
The Portuguese Association of Start-Ups (APSU) is an association that brings the Portuguese Start-Ups together in order to create synergies that will ultimately support the implementation of these companies. In order to do that, APSU supports in a multitude of critical areas for the starting companies, like legal and fiscal support, provides a legal address and temporary offices to the associates, networking between the companies, trainings and discussion forums, etc. It was created in January 2017 as a result of a series of discussion forums of entrepreneurs after the release of the Eurostat’s data from 2015 showing that the Portuguese enterprises were the ones in EU-28 with the lowest survival rate after 5 years. It quickly became evident need of the creation of national platforms for the cooperation of entrepreneurs, the creation of synergies, the exchange of good practices and the peer-counselling, and it was for this purpose that APSU was created. Currently APSU has offices in the regions of Lisbon and Porto and intervenes in areas such as entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, connection of VET with the needs of the labour market, transfer of skills needed for the labour market of the future, support of NEETs for the transition to the self-employment and labour market. The key staff of APSU is composed by entrepreneurs that have a strong connection with VET. In this way they manage to support the transition from Education and Training to viable entrepreneurs. Furthermore, some of the key staff are engaged in political activities at local level, which ensures the engagement of the socio-political key stakeholders in the implementation of innovative good practices to support the entrepreneurs.
die Berater Unternehmensberatungs GmbH (Austria)
The core competence of “die Berater” Unternehmensberatungs GmbH (www.dieberater.com) is adult education and training. die Berater® offers holistic consulting, coaches employees and managers, and is specialized in soft skills, language and IT seminars. The portfolio is targeted at individuals, companies of all sizes and industries, as well as the public sector, e.g. the Austrian Employment Service (AMS), ministries, the European Commission, and other stakeholders of the education system. die Berater® works in around 45 branches across Austria. Since the foundation of the company in 1998 around 350.000 people have participated in the training offers of its approximately 200 training programmes per year. To become fit for the labour market or to update and expand their professional and personal competences in the spirit of lifelong learning. As consultants die Berater® support private businesses and organisations in their strategic development while always focusing on the persons employed as the core asset of a company. In line with this principle, die Berater® internally live for a company culture which ranks fair play, mutual appreciation and tolerance top. die Berater® forms an international company group with MAKAM Research and CATRO Personalberatung. The group provides comprehensive know-how in all aspects of human resource management one-stop. From recruiting to HR consultancy, education and training, coaching, staff satisfaction surveys or outplacement and temporary employment. Contents and methodologies of our training offers are tailor-made according to the needs of our customers. die Berater’s New Media department develops educational architectures, provides tailor-made e-learning and mobile learning solutions, and produces state of the art e-learning content. At the core of die Berater®’s seminars, workshops, and coaching and consulting sessions is the principle of appreciation and the acknowledgement of existent knowledge and experience of the individual person. die Berater®, with its department bridges to europe, has been involved in more than 160 EU-funded projects in different roles – as project coordinator, partner and evaluator. Through these projects a sustainable European partner network of more than 800 organisations from 45 countries has evolved. Not only does die Berater® participate in European projects, but members of staff have also authored several publications which were recommended by the European Commission to project applicants and coordinators. These publications deal with the competencies needed for successful cooperation in European projects and networks. In particular “Survival Kit for Lifelong Learning Projects” is widely known as a standard project management handbook. die Berater® has been involved in several EU-funded projects on sustainability issues: NE(W)AVE developed an online technical and craft professions related to renewable energy. Time4Society focuses on CSR, corporate volunteering and the SDGs, while Time4Sustainable Development enhance continuous professional development along the SDGs. SUM provides a Corporate Social Responsibility Framework for start-ups. ClimateBox prepares a set of mini-interventions for adult educators to promote climate-friendly life-styles. In die Berater® ‘s corporate culture fair play, respect tolerance and social responsibility are central values. die Berater® is certified – apart from several Austrian quality assurance systems for education and training – according to IS0 9001:2000. die Berater® was awarded with the state award for adult education (Österreichischer Staatspreis für Erwachsenenbildung).
