Worldconnector Tineke Lambooy meets the students of Visser ‘t Hooft Lyceum in Leiden during a live video connection on Tuesday 4 December. In the second live streaming video session from 09.30 to 10.30, you can watch Lambooy in a discussion with students about Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Global Citizenship.

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After this session you can watch the video with Tineke Lambooy in the archive. This connection is part of ‘Learning Circle’ and ‘Expert on a distance’. In this project students meet international experts and talk with them about MDGs and Global Citizenship through video and web conferencing. More information on www.expertopafstand.nl.

Tineke Lambooy is the author of the book “Een Wereld te Winnen. Zestien visies op Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Ondernemen” (‘A world to gain: sixteen views on corporate social responsibility’), a multidisciplinary study on corporate social responsibility (Kluwer 2006). Tineke focuses on this area in her work as a lawyer and university lecturer/researcher.

For more information on Worldconnectors

Between summer 2006 and summer 2007 the number of jobs in the European Union has  increased by three million. In total there are 222 million jobs. Europe has about 500 million citizens of which 325 million are employed aged 15-64.

The job increase is especially established by economic growth in Germany, Poland and Spain.

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The creation of new jobs is the strongest in Eastern European countries.

In Q3  the unemployment rate has decreased in almost all EU countries to, on average, 7.1 percent.  Poland has the strongest decrease: with 4.2 percent (to 9.1 percent of the working population.) In 2005 8.7% of the labour force was unemployed,  compared with 5.1% in the United States.

The development of the unemployment rates in Europe equals figures in the United States and Japan, respectively 4.6 and 3.8 percent in Q3.

More than a half of the European employees between 20 and the 39 years consider a job change.

According to 39 per cent switching to another job is to blame to their employer. Employers insufficiently  support employees to realise their potential.

This is the outcome of the research report ‘ Dream job or Career Nightmare?’ of the international consultancy OPP. The investigation has been conducted under 3,000 fulltime employees in 6 European countries, in the age category 20-69 years.

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36 per cent said that a better salary was the main reason for changing jobs in the past. But it is not only money. Besides lack of challenge, insufficient career perspective and dissatisfaction are the given answers.

Dutch employees are more satisfied than colleagues from France, United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Belgium. However one of every three employees questioned, say that the organisation lacks  structured evaluation and feedback.

The so-called career nomads have financial consequences for organisations, like extra costs for hiring new experienced staff and expensive training costs. Moreover, the loss of knowledge is an expense  that is open to estimation. Retaining personnel can only be realised when organisations pay more structural attention to the support and development of its employees. 

Download the research report

The When We Connect Project! Polish-Dutch Divide? What’s the connection? 
When We Connect was set up for Dutch and Polish high school students.
Students learn about each other and their countries throughout the school year,
and hold a conference on European issues in The Hague in May of 2008. 
When We Connect would love to see a follow-up conference in Poland in 2009, but needs your support!
See: http://www.europeesplatform.nl/polen/

In Lisbon, October 2007, the Comenius Mobil ID Project was launched. This project is about European and Global Citizenship. Mobil ID stands for mobility and identity. Young citizens of Europe use their mobile and are far more mobile than European citizens have ever been. Social networking and a ‘nodes-and-ties’ structure are patterns of European life of today and the future. How flexible do we need to be to be in constant dialogue with rapidly changing values? See http://mobilid09.googlepages.com/

The Comenius III Network Elos is meeting from the 14th-16th of October in Lisbon, Portugal. At the conference 120 teachers from all countries in Europe are discussing the use of a European portfolio, the framework for the European and International competence of secondary school pupils, as well as the certification in the form of Certilingua, to add to a pupils CV.

European teachers are also exchanging good practice lesson materials on European and International citizenship.

The schools working within Comenius III are currently integrating European and International themes into their curricula and working closely together in this development.

Hi Colleagues

I have uploaded two videos on YouTube re: our Tree Planting at the Visser ‘t Hooft Lyceum, Leiden, The Netherlands. Just search for sips67.

Scott Skinner

Teacher

Teachers’ Project Made in Europe” awarded language label by Dutch ánd Turkish National Agencies 

Dear teachers of the learning circle Made in Europe, I would like to announce that our school has been awarded with the ”European Language Award” for the project “Teachers’ Project Made in Europe” by the Turkish National Agency. I am so happy to share it with you! Now our learning circle of teachers has been awarded 2 labels: both by the Dutch ánd the Turkish national agencies!

First of all, I would like to thank Marleen because she really helped me a lot while I was making the necessary arrangements for the evaluation! Thanks Marleen!

I hope our group will go on cooperating!!! Have a nice holiday my dear friends.

Best wishes,

Sema, teacher from Turkey

VIDEOCONFERENCE European Pupil Jury

What did we do on Europe Day? Visser ‘t Hooft Lyceum from Leiden, the Netherlands VHL Website and VHL Internationale Leeromgeving, is one of the Elos Comenius III Network Schools for European Citizenship. We organised a videoconference in which European pupils acted as jury for a contest. Pupils from Bulgaria website Bulgarian school, Italy: Liceo Linguistico Internazionale “Grazia Deledda”, Turkey: TED Ankara College Foundation Schools and Romania: Grup Scolar Industrial Constructii De Masini Sibiu joined our pupils and presented themselves in English!

We listened to a song and we saw beautiful contributions made by talented pupils from all over Europe. We thank our partners for participating and joining us in discovering the use of videoconference through use of the net. We appreciated:

- your willingness and enthusiasm to join us and give us your valuable time
- your braveness in trying something new, a very important quality in a teacher
- your patience when things were more difficult then they seemed when we started
- your allowing us to learn together, very appropriate in this shared celebration of Europe: 50 Years

Together: Congratulations on the Birthday of Europe!
- to see your faces, to hear your voices (well, most of them;), to know that we had Turkish, Italian, Romanian and Bulgarian pupils LIVE in our Dutch classroom, our pupils thought it was very interesting to be a witness to this videoconference and to have met you!

Flexicurity is the magic word.

If you believe having a job for life is a thing of the past, then you are like three quarters of European citizens. Today’s fast-changing global economy is the culprit.

To make more and better jobs possible, the European Commission is getting behind the active labour market concept of flexicurity. This combines security both for workers and companies.

One of its main principles is to narrow the comfort gap, say between someone with a steady longterm paycheck and the person in and out of the job centre, whose life feels more like walking a tightrope.

A spokeswoman in Brussels:
“What are the next steps? Basically, we are looking at establishing common principles which can then be adopted at the European Council in December.”

Flexicurity’s aims include ensuring that more Europeans enjoy income support between jobs or have opportunities to start their own businesses. It is also to prevent companies being mummified in red tape.  (Source Euronews )