SUCCESS aims to apply the principles, methods and techniques of Positive Psychology (PP) as well as the development of basic Employability Skills (ES). By educating schools counselors (SUCCESS target group) through training in participating EU countries, they will be in a position to transfer new knowledge and skills to school settings at a national and an EU level.
The goal of SUCCESS is to create an innovative training package for School Counselors (including a manual, accompanied by hands-on activities, tools and practical exercises) based on PP principles that will be applied successfully mainly to support students after they graduate from high schools. SUCCESS aims to enhance School Counselors competencies.
About the project
Project description:
The goal of the SUCCESS Project is to create a training package for post-primary School Counsellors that will help support students who are transitioning from school to employment. The training will combine the principles, methods, and techniques of Positive Psychology with practical Employability Skills, and enhance students’ well-being, resilience, and optimism, giving them practical strategies for success as they take their first steps into the jobs market.
Formal educational approaches tend to focus on academic achievement, but can neglect other aspects of students’ development such as social and emotional competencies, and other character strengths, social skills, resilience, communication skills, team-work, critical thinking, self-awareness and self motivation, are often overlooked in an academic environment. To address these gaps, the SUCCESS Project will deliver effective Employability Skills, and strategies from Positive Psychology, to enhance students’ wellbeing and improve their employment opportunities.
The training course developed as part of the SUCCESS Project will incorporate active approaches to learning, such as - cooperative learning, case studies, role playing, problem solving activities, and mind-mapping. A strengths-based approach will also be taken, as it helps students identify their abilities, rather than their shortcomings. This technique uses narratives, and solution- focused strategies that help people pursue goals, solve problems, and achieve their objectives.
The model of “experiential learning” will also be used in counsellors’ training sessions, enabling school counsellors to actively participate and learn by doing, observing, thinking and planning. School counsellors will become the ambassadors of this innovative approach to fostering positivity and enhancing employability skills in students.
Project objectives:
• To develop, test and publish an innovative training program for school counsellors on Positive Psychology and Employability skills.
• To create an educational tool that will be provided to school counsellors to further enhance the quality and professionalism of their efforts to help students to acquire skills that will support them on their journey to employment.
• To enrich school counsellors’ personal and professional development so as to be able to better support their students.
• To create and publish the educational tools and strategies in a widely available online format.
It is our pleasure to introduce to you the 1st Newsletter of SUCCESS project.
Duration:
September 2017 – September 2019
Results:
• Comparative Literature Review in all partner countries summarizing the most important sources, practices and researches of the needs of School Counsellors
• SUCCESS Training Package
• SUCCESS Online Educational Platform
Funding:
The project is funded under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership initiative.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Visit our website: www.eusuccess.eu
Visit our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SUCCESS.EU17/
Project participants
Coordinator:
Vilnius University (Lithuania) - head of the project – assoc. prof. Birutė Pociūtė
Partners:
GrantXpert Consulting Limited (Cyprus)
Neophytos Ch. Charalambous – Institute of Development (Cyprus)
Net – ICEP Europe (The Institute of Child Education and Psychology Europe) (Ireland)
HAPPSY – Hellenic Association of Positive Psychology (Greece)
CESIE (Italia)
Project meetings
1ST PROJECT MEETING
1st transnational project consortium kick-off meeting took place at Vilnius University on 24 – 25 October, 2017.
The main objectives of the kick-off meeting was to overview of the project idea, to discuss and decide more in detail activities and its implementation time-schedule, to discuss project management and operational procedures, finance distribution among partners, administration and contractual rules, first tasks of IO1 and etc.
2ND PROJECT MEETING
2nd project consortium meeting took place at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece on 24 – 24 April, 2018.
During the meeting in Athens the preliminary results of the research on Positive Psychology principles and career guidance carried out in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and Lithuania, partner countries of the project, were presented. Partners selected the materials for the development of the SUCCESS Handbook, which will include theoretical elements and practical activities/methodologies that can be applied concretely in the work of school and career counselling.
3RD PROJECT MEETING
3rd project consortium meeting took place at GrantXpert Consulting Ltd, Nicosia, Cyprus on 19 January, 2019.
During the 3rd transnational meeting, hosted by GrantXpert Consulting Limited, the partners focused on presenting and discussing the given feedback of the Train the Trainers workshop to evaluate the presented methodologies. Furthermore, partners presented and defined the common structure and methodology for the implementation of Piloting in all the participating Countries.
After having tested and evaluated the training methodology with the school counsellors, the SUCCESS Training Package consisting of the SUCCESS Guide and the Handbook for school counsellors and high school students will be elaborated. Afterwards, the partners will develop the SUCCESS Online Platform, which will contain all the project information, the training methodology as well as the SUCCESS Training Package and will be available in all partner languages (English, Lithuanian, Greek and Italian).
The finalized report will be soon available on www.eusuccess.eu.
SUCCESS C1 Activity: Train the Trainers in Cyprus
Train the trainers took place in Institute of Development (N.Charalambous) Ltd, Nicosia, Cyprus on 14th to-18th January, 2019.
The aim of this workshop is to train the people from partners institutions who will be involved as trainers in each participating country during the piloting testing seminars: they will be trained on how will implement the two outputs (IO2 and IO3) during the training sessions with school counselors.
During the five-days Train the Trainer workshop, the partners presented and discussed the different modules they developed to train school counsellors. The modules addressed positivity, character strength, resilience and the meaning of life (at work) - all following the overall objective of integrating Positive Psychology methods into teaching environments were presented by partners. The workshop was hosted by Neophytos Ch. Charalambous – Institute of development, one of the Cypriot partners.
