An Erasmus+ Project, CONNECT Virtual Mobility aims to improve the lives of young unemployed people and to provide opportunities to work on projects with their groups in other nations, whilst boosting their personal, social and employability skills.
CONNECT Virtual Mobility has been designed, tested and developed through a transnational project, funded through the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, and has been delivered by a partnership between six organisations from Cyprus, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK.
The aim of CONNECT Virtual Mobility was to address issues of youth unemployment by enabling young people to develop personal, social and employability skills through a virtual mobility app.
The CONNECT Virtual Mobility app enables groups of young people from different EU countries (supported trainer /youth worker /practitioners) to work together on virtual mobility projects, to undertake project-related tasks and record project results via the app using photographs, audio, film and social media and share the project results in real time.
CONNECT Virtual Mobility is supported by products and a teaching manual to enable youth workers, trainers and teachers to engage young people – specifically those who are Not in Education or Employment (NEET) – in relationships and transnational collaborative experiences via non-formal learning to
Supported by a Portal, activities can earn young people participating in projects can gain Youthpass certificates. Youthpass is a European recognition tool for non-formal and informal learning in youth work. With Youthpass, the participants in these projects can describe what they have done and show what they have learnt. Through the Youthpass certificate, the European Commission ensures that the learning experience gained through the different initiatives is recognised as an educational experience and a period of non-formal learning.
The recognition of these personal, social and employability skills may involve the following steps:
1. Identification and recording of what young people know and can do. This could be done through a process of systematic self-reflection.
2. Validation or establishing whether knowledge and skills satisfy certain requirements or standards. This could be done through feedback and the guidance of a second person involved in the learning initiative.
3. Certification or issuance of a document to certify performance.
4. Social recognition of the awarding body and acceptance of what they are certifying.
For more info about the impact of Youthpass on young people’s learning and employment, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCcsYRuLsw