SCALE UP is a project whose goal is to help young students and graduates develop useful skills to improve their employability. During the 18 months of the project, the partners investigated the most sought-after skills and created online training activities and handbooks to share with their target group. The partners identified four skills: critical thinking, emotional intelligence, leadership, and digital skills.
On April 29, 2024, the partners organized an in-person training event with 28 young people. The goal of the event was to organize activities and games that could help the participants develop one of the four skills. After an initial ice-breaking activity and a presentation by Vicente Ferrero, the participants were divided into four groups, each one focused on one of the skills. One member from each partner led the activity corresponding to the module they had previously drafted.
The activities ranged from games developed to increase critical thinking skills to debates. For example, the activity developed by Developia concerned emotional intelligence, defined as “the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, evaluate, and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively” (Cherry, 2023). Naomi Nervo, the project manager responsible for SCALE UP, organized two activities to train emotional intelligence: first, the participants took part in a debate about greenwashing; then, they played a game where each person had to address the others depending on a label that only the others could see.
The common goal was to present the participants with interactive and fun ways to improve their interpersonal skills. The four skills — critical thinking, emotional intelligence, leadership, and digital skills — are not only useful for their professional lives, but also in their personal lives.
After the event, the partners took part in a meeting to discuss the future steps of the project and decide what needed to be done to end the project on time and achieve the established goals. The meeting was an occasion to create a strategy for the next two months to achieve the established goals of the project before its conclusion.
Overall, the final event and the following partners meeting signaled the final moments of a project that worked towards the enhanced of employability opportunities for young people.