About the YES Project

The Tourism Industry is a leading contributor to the economy of a considerable number of member states in the European Union. This sector requires cautious treatment as it encompasses a substantially large workforce and is of critical importance to the livelihood of a substantial number of families. Unfortunately the Tourism Industry is rapidly becoming a host to ever increasing numbers of unskilled employees at a time when it is struggling to meet the requirements of qualifications, skills and competencies for both the present and the future.

The Institute of Tourism Studies, together with a broad European partnership, has been awarded an EU grant to carry out a project aimed at promoting transparency and recognition of competencies and qualifications, across Europe, in the tourism sector.

The two-year Project entitled YES Employability, is financed by the European Union as part of the Leonardo da Vinci Lifelong Learning Programme. The project proposes to tackle the need of the Tourism Education and Vocational Training sector for a workable system of validation, transfer and recognition, of skills and competencies achieved during formal, informal and non-formal circumstances, expressed in transferrable units, and that can be linked to national and european frameworks presently in use.

The YES Project seeks to extend the work already carried out in a prior Leonardo da Vinci project, NEW Hospitality, which, during 2006 - 2009, carried out research and testing and developed an on-line database of minimum competences which allows the guided compilation of the European curriculum vitae. The YES project intends to transfer this instrument to a new spectrum of beneficiaries and integrate the database application with other Europass tools besides the CV. The Project also proposes to integrate this new product within educational and vocational training programmes in order to facilitate their adjustment to European credit transfer and recognition procedures (ECVET).

The YES Project includes eight organisations and institutions from Central European and Mediterranean countries with ITS as the lead partner. These include the Centre for Advanced Studies in Tourism (Italy), ARTES srl (a research firm from Italy), the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, the Portuguese Association of Hotel Directors, SOFATI (a research firm from Portugal), the Technical Institute of Larnaca and the Cyprus Chefs Association.

Products

The best practice identified as the basis of the proposed transfer was developed as part of the New Hospitality Project , Leonardo da Vinci Programme 2nd Phase 2000 - 2006, through which tools for the description, comparison and promotion of the qualifications and competencies within the hospitality industry were set, validated and tested.

An application for the description and cataloguing of the competencies was created and tested. This software application allows the guided compilation of the Europass Curriculum Vitae; in the original project the New Hospitality Europass was intended mainly for workers in the sector.

Transfer of Innovation

The new YES Project aims at the experimental processing and application, through their adaptation and transfer, of some of the products of New Hospitality. The YES project proposes the integration of a number of systems developed through the previous NH project with the already familiar and widelyused instruments developed at a European level (such as the Certificate Supplement and the Europass Mobility), for validation, transfer and recognition of learning outcomes achieved in formal, informal and non formal contexts.

The development of such instruments would serve to encourage the design of educational and training programmes that call for a detailed programming of learning outcomes and which would necessitate, as a reference, qualifications expressed in transferrable units that can be linked to the National and European framework in use today.

Deliverables

The YES Project envisages:

• The up-dating of the contents of the New Hospitality Database, through the use of tools derived from best practises. This would also be necessary for the applicability and relevance of the geographical transfer.
• The application of the contents of the New Hospitality database
  • to extend its use to a new range of beneficiaries, operators and users falling within the system of educational and vocational training (aged 17 to 22);
  • to allow the integration of the database itself with other Europass tools.
• The mainstreaming of the products as part and parcel of educational and vocational training programmes, to be used as instruments in support of the European Credit Transfer and Recognition procedure (ECVET). The new modification will also provide a link between competencies, professional profiles and the training paths that can be followed in the partner countries.

Targets

The direct targets of the YES Project are:

• Operators (tutors, trainers, teachers, guidance counselors) who supply training, guidance and placement services to subjects who are part of the educational and vocational training system and who intend to enter the hospitality labour market and who envisage the need for mobility.
• Young people enrolled in the Tourism educational and vocational training system.
• Young people with a medium to low level of instruction who, for example, dropped out of institutional educational programmes and who attend or have attended alternative courses.
• Young people with fragmented and heterogeneous work experience and who intend to re-enter the educational and vocational training system.

The indirect targets of the YES Project are:

• Public or private operators in the hospitality sector: businesses, trade unions and employers' associations, political decision-makers who regulate orientation, training and the labour market.