Project SCOUT

In the last five years, more and more new immigrants and refugees mainly from Syria, Iraq, North Africa and Afghanistan have been coming to Europe. They are fleeing from war, oppression and terror and are seeking for asylum and a better life. Countries like Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Sweden, Greece and Spain are most challenged to integrate the new immigrants into their societies. Therefore, it is important to collaborate transnationally in a partnership of the above mentioned countries and to benefit from mutual experiences as well as from examples of good practice.

The key factors for the integration of new immigrants in the European societies are education, training, language and work. Often new immigrants could not take any official certificate of their home country. In addition to this the educational systems in their home countries are very different compared to the host state. This fact makes it complicated to recognize and validate any formal degree and to find a suitable job that matches best their competences. Especially the recognition of learning that is either related to daily life activities such as work, family or leisure and of learning that has not been provided by an education or training institution is of particular significance for migrants. In short, new immigrants have a huge demand to make informal and non-formal competences visible and documented.

The ProfilPASS is a tool based on the assumption that people have learnt a lot but are not aware of their own competences. It is a means to reveal hidden competences, interests and resources each person has. In the EU-funded project called KISS (www.profilpass-international.eu) it was adapted and translated into French, Bosnian, Spanish, English and Slovenian. It was successfully implemented in training and counselling with young adults who wanted to find out more about themselves in order to get a training or a job that matches their competences and interest’s best. This expertise and experience collected over the years provides a strong basis for this project.

The ProfilPASS is a self-evaluation tool that helps people to reflect on themselves. Since this process can be challenging, it is necessary that new immigrants are accompanied by professional counsellors. These counsellors will be trained during the project. In addition to the self-reflective tool ProfilPASS, the project also aims to develop a set of tools that assess competences from an outside perspective. All of the tools will be collected in a so called toolkit. About 120 new immigrants will take part in the project, they will be supported by 30 counsellors from 6 countries. The counsellors will be trained during the project based on reference materials (curriculum, methods how to apply the toolkit) that will be developed, too.
Finally, the toolkit will be applied in all participating partner countries.

The project pursues two main intellectual outputs:
1. Toolkit for competence assessment for new immigrants based on ProfilPASS
2. Reference material (curriculum and manual) to the toolkit.

Both outputs will available for free and can be used by other interested stakeholders. Employers, new immigrants and organisations working with new immigrants can use the toolkit and benefit from it beyond the lifetime of the project. In the long term the results of the project will promote the integration of new immigrants.

Project Information

Ttile: ASSESSING COMPETENCES FOR FUTURE – SCOUT

Reference Number: 2017-1-DE02-KA204-004194

Implementation Period: 1/10/2017 – 30/9/2019

Partners