The Cross-Border Seminars (CBS) Initiative - Cross-Border Seminar 2024 in Serbia

Authors: Ramona Bacelj and Milena Mirić, Euroguidance Officers

A cross-border seminar (CBS) is planned in September in Belgrade Serbia under the theme ‘All for guidance and guidance for all: Enhancing the quality of career guidance through cooperation’. Participants will be from 11 European countries (Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia). Participants will exchange their expertise and innovative guidance practices. Experts will lead thematic workshops on current European guidance topics and methods during this two-day seminar.

Career guidance and counselling (CGC) services are usually provided by organisations and institutions from different sectors such as education, youth and employment. In a world that is constantly changing, cooperation is of utmost importance in order to overcome challenges and meet the needs of clients from various backgrounds. Cooperation can be established on various levels and the outcomes of this including joint initiatives can also be quite different.

On the micro-level (within institution/organisation), the examples of good practices are sometimes not noticed because the practitioners consider it as usual everyday activities. Interdisciplinary school teams or cross-curricular CGC activities are valuable resources for providing the CGC services to students in both primary and secondary schools. These activities should be recognised and valued as good practice. The activities and joint initiatives on meso-level are usually seen as one of the most valuable examples of good cooperation. There are plenty of projects (for example Erasmus+ and eTwinning) established for enhancing the quality of CGC services by providing various tools (for example joint career information platforms), job or education fairs, joint handbooks/brochures while also providing education-to-employment initiatives such as internship programs, job shadowing and learning through experience. Macro-level cooperation initiatives (national and regional initiatives, policy level) shouldn't be overlooked either. There are several examples of this across the countries. These examples include career practitioners gathering in professional associations, national platforms for cooperation and communication between career practitioners and also cross-sectoral policy working groups developing key policy documents such as standards of quality of CGC.

Valuing the cooperation and joint initiatives, this year’s cross-border seminar (CBS) will highlight examples of good practices of cooperation on all of the mentioned levels, as well as the intersectoral and inter-institutional activities established to enhance the quality of career guidance and counselling services.

The Euroguidance Serbia Team is looking forward to welcoming career guidance and counselling colleagues. This will be an opportunity for all participants to receive news, share ideas and exchange examples of good cooperation activities. See you in Belgrade!