ensie

The final conclusions of the Syscom project are available in the publication section.
 

More than 50.000 people are employed as instructors, trainers and social workers in Social Integration Enterprises in the Social Economy across Europe, helping over a million persons to improve their professional situation through work and training and by support and advising them in their integration process. These employees are responsible not only for the professional training of the transitory employees but also for documenting and developing their existing skills and competencies, helping them to reach their full potential. This enables Social Integration Enterprises to play an essential role across Europe in competency development particularly of low skilled and unqualified workers.  

In April 2008 the EU agreed on a European Qualification Framework (EQF) introducing 8 Levels of skills, knowledge and competency to improve transparency about workers skills and competencies and about qualification systems. The individual member states are now invited to create their own National Qualification Frameworks (NQF) which will mean not only deciding their national equivalent levels (which levels are relevant for their country) but also what and who will be accredited and by whom. With the frameworks the member states aim to increase upward mobility in learning, improve transparency within their own national systems for learners and for employers both nationally and across Europe as well as improve conditions for a better mobility of workers between member states. The aim of the project SYSCOM is to ensure that Social Integration Enterprises are included in this debate and that their transitory workers are not mistakenly left behind by the decision makers.  

Both new Frameworks will require Social Integration Enterprises not only to work more than ever with competency orientated systems but to improve the documentation systems for these. In this project the professional associations at a Regional, National and European level have come together to ensure that the Social Integration Enterprises are getting this message and the information they need to achieve this. This will culminate in an information and training push starting autumn 2010 which will include workshops and materials for the professional staff about already existing competency tools which comply to the requirements of NQF Systems as well as bringing them up to date on EQF and getting them involved in the NQF debate and surrounding issues.  

Before however we can start this we will need to do some status-quo analyses about

1. the types of professional training systems used in Social Integration Enterprises, which will give us answers about which certification systems are in place and what are they orientated on and if companies are delivering an individual approach how this is being done;
2. about competency documentation tools already available, taking into consideration: what relevance they have to the trainers, to the unemployment office and to the individual, if they are linked to certification systems and just how sensitive are they to intercultural and diversity issues and
3. how much knowledge and awareness there is about EQF and NQF. Using our results we want to investigate how the skills and competencies gained and learnt during a person’s time in a Social Integration Enterprise can be transferred into a NQF level and support further competency tool development.

To round off the projects activities guidelines will be created for Social Integration Enterprises at a European level with an aim to supporting them to a) develop new instruments to optimise transparency and mobility in training and employment processes and b) to increase the awareness of Social Integration Enterprises at a regional level to European mobility. All the results will be drawn together in a final report which will be illustrated with best practice examples taking into account the European overlap in approach and processes, which will be available in December 2010. SYSCOM is a joint cooperation between Austria, Belgium, Germany and Poland and is funded with support from the European Commission in the Life Long Learning Programme.

 

Truda Ann Smith, CEO

Bag Arbeit

Berlin, January 2009

Dear Visitors of the SYSCOM-Homepage! Welcome!

This Website shall give you an Overview and enable you seeing the Results and Presentations of the European Project SYSCOM (January 2009-December 2010) – and much more.

If you want to contact us, please click on „Partners“ on the left side (each Partner can be chosen separately, you will find all relevant data right there if you would like to contact us).

If you are looking for Presentations of the Meetings, or for Results of the Analyses, please choose “Syscom”.

If you are looking for Literature or Links, please click on “Links” – and for Publications, please choose “PR/Publications” (on the left side).

And if anything is missing, or you have questions or remarks, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Your SYSCOM-Team