Interests & Desires: Creative Planning of a meaningful life through the appraisal of interests and desires

Scientific Study from the year 2009 in the subject Pedagogy - Job Education, Occupational Training, Further Education, University of Flensburg (biat (Berufsbildungsinstitut Arbeit und Technik)), language: English, abstract: The project ¿Interests & Desires: Creative Planning of a meaningful life through the appraisal of interests and desires¿ (2005-2008) was funded within the Socrates Grundtvig Program of the European Commission. It addresses the situation of marginalized or disadvantaged citizens who feel excluded from society because they are out of work. A great amount of the persons affected tend to isolate themselves and do not regard their life as meaningful without work. Therefore it is important to assist them in appraising their interests, wishes, dreams and desires and to plan the use of these intentions outside the labour market in order to live a meaningful life. This project is crucial because a lot of unemployed people participate in schemes which should help them to improve their situation within the labour market. Despite their endeavors and the progress they achieve during the course they do not arrive at entering the labour market because there are not enough jobs on offer. In order to avoid that these people feel excluded from society and start to isolate themselves it is important that they are assisted in discovering their interests, wishes, dreams and desires and in finding out about options for their realisation outside the labour market. Through such assistance the persons affected are supported in living a meaningful life sometimes even independent of gainful employment. They should be supported in creative planning of this particularly because the conditions they live in have often lead to passivity. The different course concepts and approaches developed within the project aim at stimulating them to take part in this creative planning to give them the opportunity to address their interests and desires which may have become tacit. This book contains the foundations, the results and the approaches from the six European partner countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Romania, Portugal and UK. It gives further information on how to use the ICT-tool within existing course for the target group. An important innovative aspect is that all approaches do not only aim at the empowerment of the target group but also at relieving their teachers and trainers from the excessive demand to transfer all participants to the labour market. It provides a truly new way of dealing with the problem that there will not be enough jobs for all European citizens in the near future.