Sustainability and Multiplier Effect of the ESSENCE project: A commitment to new training opportunities for soft skills’ development

The main objective of ESSENCE’s project is to improve employability opportunities for HE students leveraging on the development (nurturing) of their soft skills. ESSSENCE is a transnational and cross-cultural project co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission. It includes seven organisations from seven different EU countries representing the many different interests included by the scale and scope of the project: third sector and civil society, private sector and employment, academia and research. 

One of the most important priorities of any Erasmus+ co-financed project is assuring for the sustainability and long-term effect of the given initiatives, meaning: its capacity to generate impacts and positive outcomes even after its formal conclusion. There are many ways is this objective is achievable. First and foremost, by communicating and mainstreaming to the general public, as well as specific targets of the project, the tangible results and deliverables produced by the project. 

But sterile communication means nothing if it is not followed-up by concrete means that help the target of these dissemination activities to leverage on partners’ experience – gained by them throughout implementation – and implement their own local, national and/or international initiatives that make use of ESSENCE’s resources or came up with brand new actions that stem from the one of reference. 

In order to ease this transfer of knowledge, expertise and know how beyond the organisations (and related staff) formally participating in the partnership, while designing the project partners envisioned a whole work package structured to provide clear, narrowly-focused and concrete guidelines on how to transfer and/or replicate ESSENCE’s results in different domain of practice.

This whole work package includes two formal deliverables: i.e., guiding documents aimed at practitioners of HR disciplines and university to capitalise on partners’ efforts and embed in their strategic planning, as well as daily training activities, the results from the project in the sense of: takeaways, lessons learnt and recommendations for the provision of new, experience-based and innovative capacity building opportunities. 

  1. ESSENCE’s guidelines for uptake. On the basis of results and impacts achieved so far, each partner will compile  a formal document: lessons learned and key takeaways from all partners emerging from the piloting phase, and overall STKHs’ engagement practices (i.e., a wealth of knowledge on which other groups on interest can benefit from); guidelines for the adoption of the training resources, materials and tools and its transferability in other domains of practice
    This is not a mere Validation Report, the document is conceived to provide: detailed instructions on operational and managerial features, including the delivery mechanisms and other operational aspects of the training; further guidance to other VET/HE institutions on the delivery means, structure of the workshops, recommendations on the blended learning capabilities and recommendations for the OER eLearning modalities; best practices and recommendations for the valorisation of EU funding means for education and training opportunities
  2. ESSENCE’s Soft Skills Manifesto. This document collects the lessons learned and praxis occurred at implementation of the project, translating the results and impacts of IO1, 2 and 3 into a policy document that puts forward evidence for HEI in the domain of education, students’ empowerment for transition into the labour market, strengthening of training offer following markets and employers’ demand. 

Both documents represent the “institutional and operational memory” of the project, consolidating results, findings and strategic features experimented at implementation that are poised to inform new practices at formal and informal level; while putting out innovative ideas and inputs to relevant STKHs orbiting around the ecosystems of VET, HEI and employability.

Both documents will be available in free version for consultation in October 2022 via the official Open Education resource Platform of the project: https://projectessence.eu/index.php