LION is a Grundtvig multilateral project, addressing the issue of NEETs, a critical European topic of those days. The acronym NEET refers to all young people who are : Not in Employment, Education or Training. Those youngsters are thus apart from the job market and educational or training institutions, which makes it even more difficult to reach them for social workers.
The last report about NEETs realized by Eurofound in 2012 [1] states that in 2008, 11% of 15-24 year olds and 17% of 25-29 year-olds were NEETs. By 2011 these rates had increased to 13% and 20% respectively. There are currently 14 million young people currently not in employment, education or training (NEETs) in Europe, costing an estimated at €153 billion in economic loss to society [2], and increasingly threatening the future of an entire generation.
Analyses reveal that those with a lower educational level are overrepresented in the NEET group. This led to consider few elements as priority topics, such as adult education, second chance schools, struggle against early school leaving and social exclusion.
Considering this urgent need for education and skills increasing, LION aims to deepen the work achieved within two other projects (also funded by the Life-long learning program): EXACT and DEVOTED, and addressing the same needs.
The aim is to provide to all relevant stakeholders more tools and methods, in order to be more efficient and improve their work.
In particular, we have the project of unifying three unavoidable aspects which are : education, daily life and free-time, work experience. We believe that only a holistic approach can respond in the best way to the needs of this very specific target group.
We will address six very concrete objectives:
1.to connect the worlds of learning, living, and working in NEET work
2. to transform and improve the skills of teachers/trainers and mentors
3. to improve the European area of lifelong learning, for work related to NEETs
4. to develop and implement a quality mark for institutions working in the field
5. to expand the already existing “Centre of Excellence” with good practices out of the triangle learning, living, working.
6. to promote social and economic inclusion of the NEET-target group
Within a course of two year, the project will lead to several products, including:
- guidelines and quality label for regional centre of excellence;
- training module for professionals active with the NEETgroup in the triangle of learning, living and working;
- inventory of good didactic tools;
- recommendations for e-learning in second chance education;
- E-portfolio good practices within the triangle of learning, living and working (and in particular with enterprises)
- an handbook containing Curriculum for the training mentors;
- an handbook to set up mobility actions for the NEET-groups
- E-portfolio containing all best practices
LION is a two-year initiative involving 5 different organisations : Doncaster College (UK), Euricon (The Netherlands), E2C-Norrkopin – Hagagymnasiet (Sweden), Iskolafejlesztsi Alapitvany IFA (Hungary), Centro Studi e Iniziative Europeo – CESIE (Italy), E2C73 (France) and WBK – Weiterbildungskolleg der Stadt Moenchengladbach (Germany).
Contact us:
Email: info@lionlearning.eu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lionlearning.eu
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LionLearningEu
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
[1] Eurofound (2012), NEETs – Young people not in employment, education or training: Characteristics, costs and policy responses in Europe, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg
