XPTO+

The XPTO projects were promoted by EUROYOUTH Portugal with the aim of providing mobility for adults active in the labour market, with university graduation or professional training diploma, searching for work or in professional reconversion, aged between 18 and 35, emphasising three areas: social work, tourism and ICT. These areas were selected because these are the areas of the majority of young people that contacted EY, areas with difficult insertion in the labour market and/or primary sectors for the country’s development.

The general objectives were:

• Contribute to the professional, personal and social training through the integration in international internship programs;
• Consolidate the mobility and the international experiences as essential elements in young people’s personal and professional training;
• Foster the network of partnerships education-employers-community;
• Contribute to greater equality in the distribution of LdV grants at national level, that currently excludes cities, organizations, and, as a result, young people.
  Some of the verified impacts were:
• Reinforcement of the theoretical training of participants with practical experience in EU companies;
• Improvement of job opportunities for the participants, decreasing high rates of unemployment;
• Increases in the mobility of qualified young people;
• Promotion of the European accreditation of vocational skills;
• Improvement of linguistic, personal and social skills;
• Contribution for professional, personal and social development of participants as European citizens through the promotion of intercultural skills;
• Increases in the capacities of youth to take initiative and be entrepreneur;
• Greater companies’ awareness about the benefits of HR mobility;
• Consolidation of work and mobility networks with the harmonization of good practices;
• Better capacity of cooperation between European entities.