Projects

Current projects

Information and Guidance Portal for Further Vocational Training

The objective: The project aims to create an information portal for further vocational education and to support the development of community of guidance professionals focusing on further vocational education.
Activities of GSSU:
1. Detection of information and guidance needs in the field of further education (qualitative interviews).
2. Building a background for guidance practitioners (networking, specialized education courses)

Online Tool for Educational and Vocational Orientation

Leonardo da Vinci project
Coordinator: France, partners: Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany
The objective: the project aims to create
1. Web portal providing information on the current educational and employment opportunities.
2. Online guidance tool based on various methods of assessment of competencies.
3. Online guidance services provided by career guidance specialists.
More at www.orienteexpress.eu

YOUTH - Young in Occupations and Unemployment: THinking of their better integration in the labour market

Contract with European Commission - DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities
Coordinator: Italy, partners: Czech republic, Hungary and experts from EU countries
The objective: to get a comprehensive overview of current practices of labour market integration of young people and to identify the best practices to improve young people's pathways to work in the future.

BADED - Barriers in Adult Education

The GSSU has been coordinating Socrates/Grundtvig project BADED. Three other partners from Austria, Finland and Italy have been involved as well. The project aims at defining barriers preventing adults, especially those coming from geographically and socially disadvantaged regions, from further education of various forms and kinds (e.g. barriers originating in the educational or guidance system, in the labour market as well as in socio-cultural norms or barriers given by the individual's mental condition).

Labour Market Institute - support system for employment services

The objective of the project is to streamline employment services in the Czech Republic and ensure their enhanced quality and accessibility for various client groups. It is divided into 14 key activities. The Guidance Services Support Unit is involved in the key activity "An analysis of and proposal for optimisation of the guidance system in public employment services".
This key activity consists of three stages:

An analysis of the current state of guidance services in the Czech Republic
A comparative study of guidance services in selected EU countries
A proposal for optimisation of guidance services in the Czech Republic

The project is funded from the European Social Fund and the Czech state budget and will be realized till 30 of September 2008.

Realised projects

Academia

Academia is a project of European placements for vocational and educational counsellors, which is implemented within the Leonardo da Vinci programme. The project offers vocational and educational counsellors with the opportunity to undergo a week-long placement abroad. The participant visits various workplaces (guidance centres, labour offices and resource centres), which facilitate his/her understanding of the guidance system of the host country. We organise such placements for guidance counsellors coming to the Czech Republic.
More at http://www.ac-creteil.fr/steurop/

DEALL (Distance Education about Life-long Learning)

This project was funded by the EU´s SOCRATES, GRUNDTVIG programmes, bringing together professionals from a range of organisations with experience of distance education and lifelong learning. The partnership brought together experience from the private and public sectors, and the project developed through the interaction of partners with different views of lifelong and distance learning.
The aim of the project was to develop a programme to improve the skills, knowledge and competencies of lifelong learning providers, including teachers, managers and others. This was achieved through a programme of 11 individual modules provided by leading institutions and evaluated through a pilot process.
More at www.deall.cz

Distance Counselling

The NRCVG was involved in a three-year Leonard da Vinci project entitled "Distance Counselling" which was co-ordinated by the German Bundesanstalt für Arbeit. The project aimed to develop a methodology for the provision of counselling services on the telephone, to train the relevant trainers, to undertake pilot testing and to put the methods into practice. The project also involves the publication of a catalogue of methods for vocational counselling on the phone, including training instructions. Partners in the participating countries developed national versions of the catalogue so as to take account of the specificities of the relevant countries.

Embracing E-learning

The Unit became involved in the two-year (2004-2006) Socrates/Grundtvig project Embracing E-learning which aimed to facilitate contacts between teachers and students, and to test the potential of e-learning and m-learning (the provision of learning materials via mobile devices) with a view to full involvement of adults in lifelong learning. The project partnership included five EU countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal and UK).

Estia

The ESTIA web information system puts together available and reliable information sources in the area of education and the labour market in individual European countries. Due to its easily-readable and uniform structure, ESTIA facilitates an easy understanding of references to sources in the field of education, the labour market and various professions, as well as information about individual countries and their important institutions.
More at http://www.estia.educ.goteborg.se/

European Guidance Forum - National Guidance Forum

The NRCVG managed to get involved in the two-year project European Guidance Forum (2004-2006) which is co-ordinated by Steirische Volkswirtschafliche Gesellschaft, Graz, Austria. The project's aim is to contribute to the development of lifelong counselling, the exchange of experience and dissemination of good practices at national and trans-national levels. It is envisaged that national platforms for lifelong counselling should be set up as well as one common trans-national platform.
More at http://www.lifelongguidance.net/llg.nsf

Fit for Europe

The duration of the project in the framework of the Leonardo da Vinci programme was 3 years (2003 -2006). During this time, the partners developed a multilingual online platform, offering a rapid review on education, study and career in 31 European countries. The project was realised by a broadly based partnership of experienced institutions and companies from 16 European countries. The information on the countries are available on the platform in 9 languages.
More at www.fitforeurope.info

Guidenet

The NRCVG played the role of a partner in Guidenet, which was a three-year Leonardo da Vinci project. The project was co-ordinated by a British organisation Careers Europe and it facilitated dissemination of results of successful national and international projects concerned with counselling. It also made it possible for the counselling community to build international contacts and establish cooperation with various European institutions. The website for the project and the communication platform serves as a discussion forum for all those interested in counselling in Europe.
More at www.guidenet.org

Rainbow

The Rainbow project aimed at increasing intercultural awareness and competence among guidance counsellors (soft skills) and encouraging the use of information and communications technology (hard skills) in the field of guidance and counselling with special emphasis on intercultural communication. These objectives were met by designing and implementing the Rainbow training module on intercultural communication in guidance and counselling consisting of three integral parts that are available at http://rainbow.cimo.fi/

Training of Counsellors - research project

The Department of Educational Sciences of The Faculty of Arts Masaryk University in Brno carried out a survey in 2003 on educational opportunities for counsellors both in the Czech Republic and abroad. The output of the project is the research report "Training of Counsellors in the Czech Republic".
The research report consits of these basic parts:

Analysis of the Czech guidance systems, its role, operational environment, scope of guidance provision, qualification of guidance practitioners, educational and training opportunities (pregradual, postgradual, further training)
Survey on institutions that provide education and training for counsellors in the Czech Republic
Training of counsellors in other EU countries
Comparison of the situation in counsellors education and training in the Czech Republic and other EU countries and recommendations for improvement