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SOPHIE: Developing Women's Skills for the Future Labour Market

Sophia is a female name derived from σοφία, the Greek word for "Wisdom", and this name is perfect to describe a project based on women's knowledge.  The SOPHIE partnership will enable women to share and exploit their knowledge and experience in a Web 2.0 context.  They will be developing ICT skills and social skills at the same time and within a mutual support system encouraging a guidance network where every woman has valuable knowledge to share.
 
SOPHIE attempts to connect professional and vocational guidance, informal and formal systems in collaborative and participative scenarios where everybody has something to contribute with.
 
Why this project?
 
Women have been traditionally held unequal positions in most of the areas of life.  As a result of this, there are several gaps that have been preventing them living to their full potential.  Society is not taking full advantage of their potential and talent, so communities are not progressing as they could.
 
Labour market forecasts point out that the future labour markets will require new skills and the qualification levels, and demand will be higher.  For this reason, women should act now, through means of innovative guidance systems.  This will enable improved access to the future labour market whilst avoiding the skill mismatch.  
 
The situation of women is different for each EU Partner and through this project we will get to know the reality of women in each of these countries better. Through this EU partnership we will be able to connect women in order to set a network of support and informal professional guidance.
There will be different facebook groups coordinated by partners, so join us!
 
Objectives:
 
1-To explore innovative and informal professional guidance systems based on virtual volunteering, collaboration and mutual knowledge.
2-To establish an informal network where women from different educational backgrounds so they can exchange their experiences in the labour market and training pathways acting alternatively as mentor-user.
3-To prepare women for the future labour market requirements giving them options to reduce their own skills mismatch.
4-To provide women with practical and useful tools for their job search, work-life balance, training, etc.
5-To encourage dialogue between professionals working in gender and labour market issues.
 
Partners:
Magenta Consultoría (Spain)
CIAPE (Italy)
 Ballybeen´s Women Centre (Northern Ireland)
Bumps, Babes & Beyond (UK)
MTM College (Bulgaria)
Belver (Slovakia), Business and Development Center (Poland)