From March 21-25, 2022, the ten V2V partners met for the first time in Alba, to capitalize on the results of the first year of the project's activities and work on capacity building plans for each of the five Balkan schools.

The V2V project is a three-year program that aims to innovate, modernize and internationalize vocational schools in the Western Balkans. The partners of the pilot project are five European vocational schools from Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Slovenia and Croatia and five schools from Montenegro, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each European institute supports a "twin" Balkan institute in the path of innovation and modernization.

The capacity building plans, built from the perspective of twinning between a European and a Balkan school, detail strategies, objectives, activities to be implemented and expected results that Balkan schools will have to achieve by the end of the project. These strategies and objectives have emerged from a careful
analysis of the needs of Balkan schools and refer to eight different thematic areas, which play an important
role in the modernization of the school. They are:

• Internationalization and mobility
• Project design and management
• Professional development of teachers
• School-enterprise cooperation (dual system)
• Entrepreneurship
• Labor market
• Career guidance
• Recognition of non-formal and informal competencies

Some of the activities will be implemented at binational level, between the "twinned" partners, while others will be implemented at transnational level with all ten partners, as they are considered fundamental and strategic for all schools.

Capacity building activities will begin in April 2022 and will continue until the end of the year, providing mobility of students, teachers and other staff, training courses, job shadowing, thematic teams online and actions dedicated to dissemination.

Apro Formazione, between May 9 and 14, 2022, will organize a course on the techniques of design and management of European projects, but also on the collaboration between schools and companies, central to the vocational training for the project V2V.

The transnational meeting was attended, at a distance, by the associated partners Xarxa and EfVET,
international networks of vocational training, together with ETF, European agency for vocational training.
The three entities have illustrated their networks, pointing out strategies, objectives and positive effects for members.

ETF in particular presented:

• The ENE network (ETF Network of Excellence), i.e., the network of FP entities of excellence at the global level, which Apro Formazione has been a member of since March 2022.
• The GLAD network (Governance, Learning, Action and Dialogue) network, created to promote lifelong learning, vocational training and skills development.

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