We have some great news to share: Dandelion Social Innovation Lab is a partner in ROOTED – Innovating VET Orientation through Place-based Entrepreneurial Learning, a new small-scale partnership funded by the Erasmus+ programme (KA210-VET). We are proud to be part of it.
We are joined by two partners we value highly. JOBLINGE gAG FrankfurtRheinMain coordinates the project and has spent many years guiding young people with difficult starting conditions into vocational training. ACARBIO – Associazione Costiera Amalfitana Riserva Biosfera is deeply rooted in the Province of Salerno and has worked with young people, volunteers and local communities for over ten years.
A bold question
PLAN A, the model with which JOBLINGE achieves outstanding results in Germany's metropolitan areas, could also work in rural Southern Italy. We want to find out whether it does, and how it needs to be adapted. This is new ground for all of us: an urban, German model meets the rural reality of the Mezzogiorno, with its challenges and its enormous potential.
Staying is an option
to show young people aged 16 to 21 that leaving is not the only option. Many young people in rural areas cannot picture a professional future in the place where they grew up. ROOTED wants to change that. Young people get to meet, up close, the initiatives, projects and people already creating jobs and value locally. Along the way they discover training and career paths they had not seen before.
JOBLINGE brings its experience with PLAN A. ACARBIO leads the pilot phase with young people in the Province of Salerno, from November 2026 to May 2027. Dandelion builds the bridge between Germany and Italy and guides the joint reflection: what can be transferred, and what needs to be reinvented?
The first step: Frankfurt
On 12–13 October we met at the JOBLINGE basecamp in Frankfurt am Main. We got to know each other, saw PLAN A up close and, in the workshop “Bringing PLAN A to Italy”, began exploring how to bring it to our regions. We came home with plenty of ideas and are eager to put them into practice.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Nationale Agentur Bildung für Europa beim BIBB. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.