Welcome to the ITER Project

Why the ITER Project?

NEET is a pan-European challenge – NEET is an acronym for Not in Education, Employment or Training and refers to a young person aged 16-24 (in the UK) who is unemployed, not in school or vocational training.

The objectives of ITER project are directly linked to EU Youth Strategy (2019 - 2027) core priorities to fight the social exclusion and poverty affecting large numbers of young people in Europe.

NEET young people across Europe are at serious risk of poverty and social exclusion; the ITER Project will contribute to opportunities and resources necessary for NEET young people to participate fully in economic, social and cultural life.

The ITER Project Overview

The ITER project has been designed to improve methods to engage NEET young people to in identify their individual needs and barriers to mainstream vocational education and to empower them to co-design and implement their personal action plan to address their needs and barriers across 4 ‘Zones’: Learning, Life, Leisure and work, building in the customised assistance needed to support their transition from NEET to mainstream vocational education and training and to support them and their receiving VET organisation/college with a transitions action plan which sets out their support needs and agreed plan that prepares them for transition, supports them during transition and offers support to their VET organisation/college.

ITER Project Design

The ITER project combines an innovative package of active measures that have been designed to create the dynamic platform for the delivery of quality VET outcomes to young people aged 16-24 who are not in education employment or training (NEET) The ITER project has been developed and designed to build on the innovative approaches of two previous Erasmus+ projects EC-YP (Extended Choices for Young People in VET) and DayPlot ) Diagnosis and Actions for Young People Looking for a Better Future)

The ITER project will consolidate and improve the EC-YP collaborative mentoring model with specific emphasis on developing an improved initial point of entry NEET needs and barriers diagnostic and developing guidelines and practical solutions to improve the transitions of young people who are NEET to mainstream Vocational Education and Training.

The ITER project will develop a web-based platform and interface/dashboard using the DayPlot gamification methodology to design a young person friendly interactive platform which will encourage the engagement of NEET young people in the initial assessment, action planning and transitions readiness stages of their customised assistance and support their transitions to mainstream VET reducing dropout/withdrawal and increasing completion/qualifications rates for previously-NEET students/trainees.

The project work plan will be delivered through 4 integrated intellectual outputs that will design, test and share an innovative approach and model that will contribute to meaningful vocational education and training pathways for NEET young people who experience complex barriers to participation.