Soft Skills Outside of a School Learning Environment – SOUL Skills

Transferable Skills are qualities and abilities which are relevant and applicable across many areas of life, such as creativity, critical thinking, cooperation skills, self-assessment, and the ability to effectively evaluate social situations. These skills, which are crucial to children's personality growth, are normally developed within the school environment and the opportunities it provides for socialization. In an effort to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, EU countries were undertaking social isolation measures that replaced regular school life with a relatively long and unexpected period of remote education.

Against this backdrop, the SOUL projects aimed to provide information on the effects remote schooling may have had in the development of soft/transferable skills in children aged 6-12. Specifically, the project's objectives were:

to identify potential deficits in transferable skills development of children aged 6-12;
to create an evaluation mechanism of transferable skills of children aged 6-12;
to design a set of methods (Toolbox) for supporting the development of these skills and soften the negative effects social isolation exerts on them

The project focused on soft skills as they are revealed during non-formal training and cultural activities outside of the school environment, and designed its Toolbox based on its findings within those settings. In doing so, it facilitated both the children's acquisition of new academic knowledge and of transferable skills.

The project's duration was 24 months, from May 2021 to April 2023. It was funded by the Erasmus+ Programme and implemented by: AGORA Platform - Active Communities for Development Alternatives Association (BG); GIS-Transfercenter Foundation (BG); Formacion Para El Desarrollo E Insercion, Sociedad Limitada (ES); ANCE (GR); J&M Synergie (FR); NORTH Consulting ehf (IS); Fondazione Hallgarten-Franchetti Centro Studi Villa Montesca (IT).

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