A decrease in the handyman deficit can be achieved through career counselling for students at technological high schools

Bucharest, 23.10.2023. More than 100 students at two high schools with technological fields of study, from Bucharest and Ilfov county, will benefit from career counselling via the Career Bus project. Conducted by Școala de Valori, coordinated by AVE (The Association for Values in Education) and supported by Apa Nova București, the project aims to provide the participants with guidance on their professional pathway, but also with support in building a career where the jobs they choose align with their personal abilities.

The Career Bus project is being run during the October 2023 – May 2024 period, in which time 6 educational modules will be set up. In these modules, students will attend career counselling and vocational guidance workshops as they are decisive in the process of choosing a profession that takes personal abilities into account. These workshops will employ tools such as questionnaires, board-games and step-up, through which students will find out what skills they have, but also the possibilities to develop their educational and career pathways in conjunction with their aspirations. They will build up a broader overview of a future job in line with the changes on the labour market and interact with professionals in technological areas.

The Career Bus project comes as a solution to a reality we are facing on the domestic labour market. Romania has the highest early school living rate within the European Union, namely 15.3% in 2021, as opposed to 9.7%, the European Union average. According to the “2022 Country Report on Romania”, 18% of the youth aged 15-24 do not attend any form of education or are unemployed. This data underlines the need to implement across the technological high schools educational projects that emphasize education quality and career counselling so that students should become aware of the fact that learning a trade for which there is demand on the labour market is to their advantage.

Silvia Bogdan, president of Școala de Valori, believes that the project is a necessity for the students at technological high schools: “The capacity to adapt to changing present-day circumstances, to accept daily challenges, to analyse failures and integrate them into their own activity in order to relearn, will allow the youth to develop both personally and educationally, or professionally, as the case may be. Critical thinking, problem solving, resilience, practice-based learning, stress tolerance, flexibility and a series of interpersonal, leadership and communication skills will be essential for young people at the start of their academic pathway or career.”

The project will make it possible for the youth to understand why an educational pathway is necessary in order to thoughtfully choose a profession ”Career Bus is an endeavour by means of which we intend to land students a hand and help them discover themselves and be aware of the alternatives on the labour market. With this project we bring along the expertise of Școala de Valori in career counselling for youth and the employer’s perspective of Apa Nova București, so that participating students may benefit from an educational pathway suitable to their desired career and profession, but also in touch with the market realities”, stated, AVE Managing Director. As such, they will take into account the opportunities in our country and become the bridge between the generations of handymen. For this particular reason, the project includes, next to Școala de Valori and AVE, Apa Nova București. ”Apa Nova București finds itself among the companies that support education and have understood that it needs to invest in young people. The challenges on the labour market show us that there is need for future well-trained specialists who have chosen a professional pathway starting from their own abilities and aspirations, who see the profession as an integral part of a better future. This is also why we support the Career Bus project. Furthermore, we give the youth included in the programme the opportunity to interact with employees within our company, who exercise professions specific to our area of work, in order to find out directly from them what it means to have a career in a field and a profession that suit you.”, stated Irina Munteanu, Promoter of quality education from Apa Nova București.

About Școala de Valori

Școala de Valori is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation, set up in 2009, which provides undergraduate level youngsters and teachers experiences that help them unlearn dysfunctional convictions and behaviours and relearn certain notions that highlight identifying one’s own potential, developing skills required in life and enhancing the ability to carry out collaborative, multidisciplinary and multi-generation work in order to transform the current society into one orbiting around sound values. Școala de Valori has reached, by means of projects, 146,173 undergraduate and university students, 11,702 teachers and 5,916 schools. You may find additional information about Școala de Valori on the Instagram and Linkedin pages.

About AVE (The Association for Values in Education) 

AVE (Asociația pentru Valori în Educație) is a non-profit organisation whose main goal is to bring the educational system in Romania to Europe’s top 10 by 2035. AVE wishes to transform the educational system in Romania into one that promotes respect, honesty, team spirit and responsibility. You can stay in touch with AVE’s endeavours by following the LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram pages.

About Apa Nova București

Since 2000, Apa Nova București, a Veolia company, has taken upon itself the responsibility of managing the water resources, water treatment and distribution to consumers, the disposal of wastewater and rainwater from Bucharest Municipality. Throughout its more than 23 years, the water supply and sanitation system has been rehabilitated, upgraded and developed in line with the best industrial practices in the field, achievements translated, to date, into investments in excess of 750 million Euro.