> Jump to the update: “Alpha Skills, the local Co-Creation with the Lombardy Community of Practice”

> Jump to the update: “#Boot Camp: the local Co-Creation with the Veneto Community of Practice”

What for

To develop professional tools and methodologies focused on career guidance, talent and skills development, and the green economy, so to empower students with the necessary resources to make informed career choices, develop their talents, and contribute to a more sustainable development.

How 

By involving local co-creation workshops, where teachers, educators, and youth workers collaborate to create the tools. At the end, the resulting tools/methodologies will be tailored to suit the specific needs of each partner’s local context so they can be tested during further steps of the project in the other countries involved.

Outcome

The project will get a comprehensive guide that consolidates all the following tools/methodologies therefore available for interested schools and institutions: 

1. Fixed installations representing career groups in the green economy. Developed in Belgium to then be tested in Italy and Romania.
2. Local boot camps on career guidance and talent development.
3. Methodologies and tools to address talents and careers with a focus on non-formal learning methods.
4. Existing developed methodologies such as Future Booth and #FutureMe, adapted to young people aged 11 to 15.

Alpha Skills: the local Co-Creation with the Lombardy Community of Practice

The first local co-creation initiative of the Alpha Skills project, involving the Lombardy community of practice, has concluded successfully. 

The initiative’s main actors were educational professionals, including teachers and educators, from the Italian municipalities of Sondrio, Talamona (SO), Seregno (MB), and Romano di Lombardia (BG), representing a wide range of skills and experiences.

Their commitment helped enrich the co-creation process, providing a comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the needs and challenges faced by preteens in Lombardy.

Through a 9-hour hybrid training program (4 hours online and 5 hours in-person), participants acquired the skills to use #FutureMe Green Edition, an evolution of the career design tool #FutureMe, originally developed by Studio SHIFT.

#FutureMe Green Edition builds upon the original concept but integrates the GreenComp, a European framework that identifies key competences needed for a sustainable future. This integration allows the tool to guide young people not only in exploring career paths but also in developing the essential green skills increasingly sought after by employers.

Green skills encompass a wide range of abilities, from problem-solving and critical thinking within a sustainability lens to fostering a sense of environmental responsibility, and collaboration for positive change. By incorporating the GreenComp framework, #FutureMe Green Edition empowers young people to navigate the job market scenarios with a focus on building a more sustainable future.

The training program focused on equipping participants to effectively utilize #FutureMe Green Edition and it aimed to:

• Discuss the adaptation of the #FutureMe Green Edition tool to the specific needs of the target (preteens and teenagers 11-15).
• Specialize the tool’s focus on green skills, in line with the sustainability goals of the Alpha Skills project.
• Test and share feedback to further refine #FutureMe Green Edition and prepare it for international dissemination.

This local co-creation process has resulted in a powerful tool that equips preteens with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in a future increasingly focused on sustainability.

The Local Co-Creation process

1. Framing: an immersive journey to discover the challenges related to youth school guidance in a context characterized by rapid technological and social changes, with a focus on the importance of developing green skills for a sustainable future.
   
2. Learning: a practical exploration of the #FutureMe Green Edition tool in the autumn of 2023, where participants familiarized themselves with its features and potential applications, discussing how to enhance and modify the tool to meet the specific needs of preteens in Lombardy.
   
3. Refinement: a co-creation workshop where participants actively collaborated to design and adapted the original version of #FutureMe, to ensure maximum effectiveness in coherence with greencomp framework. The refinement phase concluded by testing the tool with 50+ students aged 11 to 15 to gather feedback, a crucial step to ensure the tool’s validity and reliability, offering new opportunities for further refinement. 

The participation and availability of the involved professionals were extremely high. The co-created tool was finally presented to other European partners who attended the three-day International Meeting held in March 2024 in Morbegno (SO), receiving widespread approval from the participants.

A positive experience and a replicable model

The active participation and contributions of the professionals involved in the local co-creation demonstrate the importance of the initiative for the success of the Alpha Skills project and serve as a foundation for replicating this model in other regions of Italy and Europe.
Through active engagement of local stakeholders, the Alpha Skills project will continue to develop innovative tools and methodologies for youth orientation, aiming to prepare them to face the challenges of the future of work, with particular attention to green skills and environmental sustainability.

#Boot Camp: the local Co-Creation with the Veneto Community of Practice

The Veneto Community of Practice has concluded the meetings related to the first local co-design about the methodology #Boot Camp, inviting and engaging fellow educators, teachers, psychologists, and professional figures working in the field of youth policies.

The purpose of these meetings was to review and collectively construct a methodology that can be as adaptive and flexible as possible in relation to the various contexts and territories where it will be tested, beyond the cultural and territorial specificities of the partner who will utilize it.

The diverse experiences, sometimes bold viewpoints, and varied competencies have enabled a revision of the methodology, resulting in the addition of new aspects and innovative ideas that propose an original orientation experience that is closer to the young people of today.

Through 3 meetings in-person and online, the involved professionals have learned the #Boot Camp methodology currently in use, an educational tool developed by Cooperativa Margherita in the field of youth policies, and then have re-envisioned and expanded it.

The intent is to assist students in acquiring skills and knowledge about themselves and the world of work through a hands-on experience, lived firsthand with their peers, with whom they can compare and explore new realities. This translates into promoting autonomous and responsible choices, recognizing the importance of soft skills in addition to hard skills, being able to identify one’s own competencies and aptitudes, understanding one’s own territory and what it offers in terms of employment, and discovering new, often unknown or unusual professions, particularly those that are green and oriented towards environmental sustainability. 

It is specifically to this last aspect that the Boot Camp has wanted to pay attention, seeking to promote a culture of sustainability and environmental responsibility through concrete field experience and direct knowledge of all those professions that contribute to building a green future.

Local Co-Creation Meetings

The program focused on presenting the methodology and then adapting it to possible uses in different territories and cultures, through a review that deliberated on various aspects over the course of three meetings, with a particular emphasis on the green theme.

3rd Meeting: Structuring and Revision of the #Boot Camp Methodology

Collection and integration of the ideas that emerged within the methodology, paying attention to how to concretize what emerged from the co-design tables.