Return on Investment of Work Based Learning and apprenticeships, whose shortened version is ROI, is a project co-financed by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ fund. It proposes the development of a cost and social benefits model calibrated on the specific needs of European small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in order for their managers and entrepreneurs to calculate the return on investment for apprenticeships and work-based learning supply.
Over the mid-April week (16th – 20th) the second meeting for ROI was hosted and organised by Social Value UK, whereas TUKE, the Technika 
Univerzita v Kosiciach (Technical University of Kosice), as project coordinator, was in charge of developing the partners’ reunion agenda full of commitments; as a matter of fact, the ROI’s long week not only provided for the meeting itself, but for a three-day training as well.
The training mainly regarded the issue of ‘social values’ within the Work Based Learning (WBL) and apprenticeships, their development to boost equality, improve wellbeing and increase environmental sustainability. More specifically, seven principles of social value were presented to better depict their positive impact over the work place (and not only that). According to the topic’s presentation “an account of social value is a story about the changes experienced by people. It includes qualitative, quantitative and comparative information, and also includes environmental changes in relation to how they affect people’s lives.”
The seven principles of social value are:
- Involve stakeholders
- Understand what changes
- Value the outcomes that matter
- Only include what is material
- Do not over-claim
- Be transparent
- Verify the results
The last day of this intense week was dedicated to the official second meeting of the project, during which coordinator and partners have gone through all the activities undertaken so far, as well as the schedule of the next steps envisaged by ROI.
Below you can find a brief interview of three partners strictly related to ROI: Adam Richards, from Social Value UK, Natasa Urbancikova, from TUKE, and Thanasis Theocharidis from Cosmic Innovations (COIN). In just one minute, they thoroughly present the main objectives of the workshop upon social values in WBL and apprenticeship.
The ROI project’s website may give you a better clue on what has been done so far, and on what it will be produced in the next months. On 2 – 3 October the partners will be joining the third meeting of ROI in Lisbon, so stay tuned and don’t miss any update and further development from ROI!