The first round of the PLOUTOS Business Language Course in Palermo has successfully come to an end. During November and December 2022, participants coming from various African and Asian countries, including Senegal, Bangladesh, Gambia and Georgia, used the opportunity to learn about business and official language, the Italian bureaucratic system and labour-market related skills, while practically exercising their digital skills on the computers provided by CESIE.
The main topics of the course included:
- Useful job searching tools (cv preparation, business email, interview, etc.);
- Practical procedures related to Italian bureaucracy (e.g. surfing public websites, SPID, booking appointments, searching for housing and jobs online);
- Theoretical concepts and practices related to business and finance;
- Introduction to entrepreneurship.
In their learning journey, participants were accompanied by the language teacher Solange Santarelli as well as the intercultural facilitator Moro Dagnokho and a facilitator from CESIE, who supported them in the acquiring of new knowledge on the Italian bureaucratic system and business world oftentimes providing one-on-one support to individual needs.



The chosen learning-by-doing approach has proven as highly successful in enabling participants to use the acquired knowledge after the end of the course in a practical way. This is also reflected in the feedback participants gave after the course: They underlined that the most useful element of the course were the practical exercises on the computer regarding the various topics addressed during its course.
In this context, some of them even wished for a longer course duration thus providing the opportunity to go more into depth and allow for more practice time on the computers. Furthermore, participants especially liked the testimonials of two migrant entrepreneurs: Ahmet from the restaurant Kirmal, and singer Chris Obehi, who talked in a very real way about the ups and downs of their journeys as entrepreneurs.
Between January and February, the course will be implemented a second time with the objective to foster participants’ knowledge of business language and the Italian system, ultimately enabling them to navigate the local environment independently.
About the project
PLOUTOS – cooPeration for achieving third country nationaLs’ financial independence thrOUgh financial liTeracy tOols and entrepreunerShip bootcamps is a project cofinanced by the European Union under the program AMIF (DG Home Affairs – Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund).
Partners
- Halmstad University (Sweden, coordinator)
- Innovation Hive (Greece)
- Aristotle University (Greece)
- SquareDev (Greece)
- Future Needs (Cyprus)
- European Microfinance Network (Belgium)
- Sofia Development Association (Bulgaria)
- Centre for peace, nonviolence and Human Rights (Croatia)
- Breza (Croatia)
- ABI Lab (Italy)
- CESIE (Italy)
For further information
Read more about PLOUTOS, visit the website of the project and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.
Contact Paula Luise Goltzsche: paula.goltzsche@cesie.org.