Project: Blue Career Centre of Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea
Project Acronym: MENTOR
The proposed Career Centre for the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (EM) and Black Sea (BS), aims to attract young people and experienced workers and fill existing skills' gaps by supporting activities that will increase employability in key Blue sectors of the region: Maritime Transport (shipping, ports, ship-repairs and shipbuilding), cruise and nautical tourism, aquaculture and offshore oil and gas.
The proposed Blue Career Centre seeks to provide prospects for young jobseekers in the above sectors to support businesses in finding the right staff with proper qualifications. Partners from Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania with Observers from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, will join forces to:
- Attract higher education graduates or persons with a vocational/technical qualification to maritime professions through targeted and innovative education and/or training initiatives (including career guidance);
- Retrain and up-skill workers employed in other sectors and/or people currently unemployed for a job in the blue economy;
- Diversify and expand the skills of people currently employed in the blue economy to progress in their career and/or to facilitate their mobility to other maritime jobs.
The successful operation of the first Blue Career Centre for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea will set an example and model for all other sub-sea basins in view of a future European Network of Blue Career Centres that will bring together all the stakeholders of the various European Marine and Maritime Clusters in a common effort to close the skills gap, tackle unemployment and make “blue careers” more attractive to the young people of Europe and its neighbourhood.