SUCCESS

Strategies to Utilise and Cultivate positive Characteristics & Employability Skills in Schools

Overview and Objectives

The goal of the SUCCESS Project was to create a training package for post-primary guidance counsellors that will help support students who are transitioning from school to employment. The training combines the principles, methods, and techniques of positive psychology with practical employability skills, and enhance students’ wellbeing, 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, teamwork, critical thinking, self-awareness and self-motivation, are often overlooked in an academic environment. To address these gaps, the SUCCESS Project set out to 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 incorporates active approaches to learning, such as: cooperative learning, case studies, role playing, problem solving activities, and mind-mapping. A strengths-based approach was 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” was also used in counsellors’ training sessions, enabling guidance counsellors to actively participate and learn by doing, observing, thinking and planning. Guidance counsellors will become the ambassadors of this innovative approach to fostering positivity and enhancing employability skills in students.

The project objectives were:

To develop, test and publish an innovative training program for guidance counsellors on positive psychology and employability skills
To create an educational tool that will be provided to guidance 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 guidance 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.

Activities/Outputs

All partners worked to create an online training package which serves as a pool of collective knowledge and is available for all school counsellors online as a readable or printable manual and on an online platform.

Impact

Through the correct and consistent implementation of the activities provided in the SUCCESS training package, school counsellors will impart a compendium of new skills to youngsters, especially designed to boost their eligibility for future careers or academic prospects as well as nurture important internal mechanisms that will help them to better understand themselves and obtain overall wellbeing. As young adults they will now be equipped with skills that will tremendously enhance their lives both at personal and professional level and will help them achieve their dreams whilst maintaining a relatively stable feeling of contentment and gratitude.

Partners

The project team involves institutions across five European countries including: Vilnius University (Lithuania), GrantXpert Ltd (Cyprus), The Institute of Development Ltd (Cyprus), Hellenic Association of Positive Psychology (Greece), CESIE (Italy), and ICEP Europe (Ireland).