EFIL is project partner of an Erasmus+ funded project aimed at the recognition of competences from youth mobility through the innovative system of Open badges. The project is called ‘EBA- European Badge Alliance’ and it has kicked off at the first partnership meeting on 15-16 December 2015 in Forli, Italy, hosted by the leading partner UNISER, a cooperative running mobility programmes mainly in the field of Vocational Education and Training. Other project partners represent different sectors of youth mobility such as Youth exchange Umbrella Ass. Juvenil (Portugal), Semper Avanti (Poland), Associazione Emiliano-Romagnola Centri Autonomi – AECA (Italy), Lietuvos neformaliojo ugdymo asociacija – LINA (Lithuania), and expertise in the drafting and issuing of Open badges, namely Badgecraft and Politecnico of Milan.
What are Open Badges?
The aim of the Open Badges is to give recognition to competences and skills acquired in non-formal and informal contexts, with a special emphasis on Lifelong Learning.
Open Badges were designed by Mozilla Foundation in 2011. Open Badges are based on a new online technology standard that associated the image of a badge to a series of associated metadata which are certifications of competences (organisation, event, date, evidence of competences)
What is the project about?
The project is about finding a common competence framework among different mobility programmes for young people, which refers to the 8 key competences for lifelong learning. Based on this framework, badges will be designed for different mobility programmes and organisations will be able to customize them. This set of badges will be issued through the Badgecraft platform and will be piloted as from summer 2016 within the different mobility programmes of partner organisations. Guidelines on the use of badges will be drafted accordingly. In 2017 the focus will be on drafting policy recommendations for the promotion of badges and their integration in CVs at European level, and disseminating the outcomes of the project.
Within this project EFIL is in charge of dissemination and policy recommendations. We will provide input on what are the competences participants gain from our mobility programmes so that badges can be designed accordingly, and pilot the use of badges during mobility events in the second half of 2016 (European Youth Event, VSS, other EFIL trainings, ECTP).
The next meeting will take place in Brussels at the end of March and will be hosted by EFIL. The main focus will be the design of badges and the definition of issuing procedures and criteria.
To keep updated on the project, visit www.ebawebsite.net
For more information: elisa.briga@afs.org