BeBlue Multiplier Event, Turkey, August 2022

On the 29th of August, the Osmaniye Provincial National Education of the Directorate organised the Multiplier event for the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership: Career Guidance in Blue Economy​ in Osmaniye, Turkey. The event was attended by 20 participants from seven VET organisations and schools.

The purpose of the multiplier event was to describe the overall work done throughout the life of the project, and particularly the main project results, including the Career Map with 100 job cards, the Blue Career Online Training Course and the Blue Career eMentoring Programme. The overall idea was to make the participants aware of all these results and educational materials, as well as to provide them with practical examples on how the participants could use the results in their daily work with vocational students. In fact, the results of the project are meant to help vocational teachers better understand the blue economy sectors but also to provide them with the toolbox so they can guide the careers of vocational students towards the blue economy and its sectors.

At the beginning, the event hosts from the Osmaniye İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü presented the context in which the project was created and implemented with the financial support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. The hosts gave a brief introduction on what Erasmus+ is, what are its values, topics, objectives and supported activities. Then, the OMEM representatives presented the partnership which includes the project coordinators from Romania – TEAM4Excellence and Sea Teach, the Spanish partners.

Secondly, the participants were introduced to the Blue Career Path Platform. The platform provides vocational teachers and students with information about the sectors in the blue economy: Fisheries, aquaculture and processing, Coastal and maritime tourism, Maritime transport, Ports and shipbuilding, Marine extraction of oil, gas and minerals, Offshore wind and ocean energy and Other sectors. In addition, the platform maps 100 jobs in the blue economy across these sectors and provides details the relevant job descriptions.

Moreover, the participating vocational teachers and trainers were introduced to the blue economy online training course which is available on our platform in all languages (English, Romanian, Spanish and Turkish) and contains valuable information about the sectors of the Blue Economy, together with reflection questions, quizzes and certificates for those who successfully complete the course.

Also, the event hosts presented the Blue Career eMentoring Programme which includes a mentoring workflow together with the tools necessary for mentors and mentees to work together towards creating long-term career plans in the blue economy and career objectives and actions to be undertaken by mentees in order to stay on track with their career plans.

In addition to the above, the multiplier event hosts took care of all the hosting tasks, including the invitation, meeting agenda, participant list, giveaways for participants with the Erasmus+ and BeBlue logos, refreshments for participants for the coffee break and the working lunch.

A special session of the multiplier event was dedicated to the participants’ voice, where these were invited to express their ideas about the vocational education in the blue economy and its employability potential. The overall picture drawn by the participants was that the blue economy is underestimated in the local area, but the results of the BeBlue project are very useful tools to turn things around:

“Although we are very close to Mediterranean Sea and İskenderun harbor, Blue Economy sector is too neglected. We should introduce this sector to VET students’ and young people who want to change their career. That’s why the project platform and MOOC are good sources for them.” 

Read more here.

Location: Osmaniye, Turkey

Date: 29th August 2022