ABOUT

ABOUT OUR PROJECT

Bootcamps for Emerging Technologies and Essential Skills (BETES) is a small-scale partnership funded by the ERASMUS+ funds and its main goal is to create informative educational material on new technologies and competencies that are needed by the labor market. The transnational consortium of the project is composed of three organizations: ECECT from Cyprus, SkillsZone from Malta, and Digital Idea from Greece, all with valuable experience in the technological industry, innovation, and entrepreneurship, who aim to engage with a variety of target groups such as unemployed individuals, unskilled employees, long-term unemployed individuals and generally people who want to be informed and guided on various technologies and other skills.

BETES project was inspired by the lack of soft and most importantly digital skills, which due to the rapid digital advancement, are considered of the utmost importance, by the European industry. The consortium has decided to examine this by first contacting research by collecting quantitative and qualitative data in order to create a status quo report. The data is going to be collected from businesspeople, academics, and other stakeholders and be analyzed by the consortium. The report is going to be disseminated to relative stakeholders as it is going to include valuable insights about the current emerging competencies and technologies that are demanded by the labor market. The next step is the creation of an educational program comprised of five topics, based on the aforementioned research, which will then be disseminated to the target group. Multiple FREE sessions, workshops, etc are going to be held in the three countries (Cyprus, Greece, Malta), which will also be available online (hybrid), in order to inform them about these emerging competencies and technologies, and guide the on how to get more involved and how to pursue further training on these topics.

The material is also going to be available for FREE on the educational platform class365.eu for anyone who registers, in order to promote the material globally.

What are emerging competencies and technologies?

Emerging competencies and technologies refer to technologies that have surfaced in recent years and it is estimated that they are going to be required in the technological and manufacturing sectors in the near future. Such technologies include: the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, IT skills, and data analytics, 3D printing, etc. and are already being implemented to an extent. Competencies refer to skills or traits that are highly demanded from companies in which it seems that people lack on and are also known as hard skills.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills are more closely related to personality qualities than knowledge and are the interpersonal skills that define a person’s interaction with others. Soft skills include: communication, teamwork, adaptability, problem-solving, critical thinking, etc.  They are equally important as hard/ digital skills and has been proven that employees who exhibit a strong blend of hard and soft skills frequently experience higher demand for their services in a competitive labor market.