Reach Out to the “Left-Behind” – Improving Guidance for Working Persons from the Underprivileged Milieu

In March 2022, an international project entitled “Reach Out to the ‘Left-Behind’ – improving guidance for working persons from the underprivileged milieu” (ReachOut) was approved.

The aim of the project is to focus on the possibilities of improving skills and qualifications in relation to the following target groups:

1. counsellors in the field of further education–the ReachOut project focuses on improving the skills of staff in the field of educational counselling. The project aims to reach out to counsellors, or their umbrella organisations, namely those working with people from disadvantaged backgrounds, activities will contribute to knowledge transfer and reflection on measures aimed at working people from disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as to design practical approaches to counselling. The ReachOut project will focus on the skills and competences of counsellors in the field of education, career and employment and will also target providers of further training for counsellors. It will enable counsellors and their organisations to reflect on their practical experience in the field of counselling and to define innovative approaches to training provision, including the design of training programmes.

2. policy makers at regional, national and European level. These include, for example, stakeholders responsible for educational advice and actors in the field of strategic programming and funding. For the needs of this target group, the project will present the key findings in the form of a Policy Paper “Habitus Sensitive Guidance – recommendations for policy makers”, which will be published in English, Czech, Slovenian and German and disseminated through the project website and the websites of the project partners. The results will be presented at four national seminars.

3. employees from underprivileged milieu this is the indirect target group of the ReachOut project. These are people of working age who are in employment but the relationship between employer and employee is characterised as unstable (e.g. precarious, low paid, illegal or semi-legal forms of work). They generally have limited access to formal training and counselling. In many cases they are migrants. Through activities targeting the two target groups mentioned above, the knowledge of workers in the field of counselling will also be expanded towards marginalised workers in the labour market. The project will help this target group to understand the difference between precarious work and more stable and secure work.

The project is implemented in a consortium of several institutions. The project leader is ÖSB Social Innovation gemeinnützige GmbH (www.oesb-sb.at); the partners are bbb Büro für berufliche Bildingsplanung Klein & Partner GbR (www.bbb-dortmund.de); Andragogški center Slovenije (www.acs.si) and the Research Institute of Labour and Social Affairs (www.rilsa.cz).

On the Czech side, RILSA will cooperate expertly with the Association of Adult Education Institutions of the Czech Republic (AIVD, www.aivd.cz).

The project activities will be implemented over a period of 24 months.