This autumn saw REY Europe travel to Dublin for our second Transnational Meeting of the Understanding My Journey (UMJ) project. We were kindly hosted by Ballymun Job Centre in their new offices north of Dublin.
REY Europe spent the spring and summer this year researching the landscape of soft skills development in the UK, looking especially at the relevant policy, projects and resources aimed at young people and their practitioners. These insights were then integrated into a comprehensive research report which gathered together similar country-specific research from our UMJ partners across Europe.
The final report, Interpreting Soft Skills, was launched at an event in the centre of Dublin, and was very well attended, with a panel including experts drawn from the youth, training and skills sectors from across the Irish Republic.
The main purpose of the trip for us, however, was to continue working on the project with our project partners from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia and Poland, as well as Ireland. Having concluded the first research phase, REY Europe is now leading on the development of a soft skills toolkit. A main aim of the visit was to facilitate interactive sessions to ensure that our partners could feed into the development of the toolkit, thereby ensuring its transferability to different European countries and youth contexts.
We’ll be piloting the first draft of our toolkit in early 2019. Subsequent developments will include a youth practitioners’ guide to supplement the toolkit, as well as a smart phone app.
If you are a teacher, trainer, youth worker or coach working with young people aged 18-30, and you’re interested in helping us trial the toolkit, get in touch to find out more. Check our facebook and twitter accounts, and visit the Understanding My Journey website for more information.