ePortfolio Migrants: Supporting migrants in acquiring soft skills to develop employability and entrepreneurship

The ePortfolio Migrants learning tool is an online platform that aims to enhance the social inclusion of newly arrived and long-term resident migrants by supporting them in the development of new soft skills. The overall aim of this project is to foster their social inclusion and to enable them to become more integrated in the labour market.

These objectives have been identified as necessary since observations at the European Union level shows that:

• More than 40% of migrants have jobs that are below their qualification level.

• Migrants have a lower employment rate than nationals

• Migrants have less access to adult education.

That is why, ePortfolio Migrants aims to create a comprehensive application that provides an interactive and flexible soft skills programme for migrants, as well as self-assessment tools to identify areas for improvement and monitor progress. They will have access to a set of interactive and adaptable training modules on soft skills and will be able to define a curriculum depending on the profession and soft skills they wish to target. In particular, the platform will allow them to better understand what soft skills are, but also how their knowledge and experience are linked to soft skills and how they can be enhanced and used in a professional environment (job interviews, setting up and running their own business, developing business networks, etc.).

Thus, this project has several specific objectives (non-exhaustive list):

1. To provide adult learning opportunities for migrants.
2. To increase the soft skills of migrants and thus contribute to labour market integration and entrepreneurship development.
3. Increase the autonomy and self-sufficiency of migrants to navigate life in the labour market environment.
4. Enhance social, economic, and cultural inclusion.
5. Support local authorities, NGOs, job centres and employment agencies in developing and assessing immigrants’ soft skills: support local authorities, NGOs, job centres and employment agencies in matching labour demand and supply.
6. Provide trainers and mentors with the opportunity to transfer and adapt the skills and teaching techniques learned to other contexts and other vulnerable citizens, thus further increasing the opportunities and quality of adult learning in the community.

The partnership of this project is composed of: the EUROPEAN PROFESSIONALS NETWORK (Belgium), The Square Dot team (Belgium), STIMMULI FOR SOCIAL CHANGE (Greece), GIP FORMATION ET INSERTION PROFESSIONNELLE DE L’ ACADEMIE DE NICE (France), Gestión Estratégica e Innovación SL (Spain), Learning for Integration ry (Finland), Einurð (Iceland), Exeo Lab Srl (Italy).