Promoting Entrepreneurship and Gastronomy Tourism

To promote employability, it is important to provide the right skills for those jobs in demand on the market, with a better matching of skills. The movement of labor, especially relevant for young people at the start of their careers, is also a cornerstone a means of creating opportunities; once in work, young people could use those experiences to make upward occupation transitions. Gastronomy is a key driver of tourism in the European Union, supported by EU policies that promote and develop food cultures as a way to diversify tourism, revitalize rural areas, and support local economies. Furthermore, EU supports the development of digital tools for training young people to be occupied by local businesses and stakeholders that promote their culinary routes and offerings. To this end, the “ProEnGaT" project aimed to promote cross-border professional opportunities for youth in the Mediterranean, using training as a resource to support employability and allow early familiarization to work. These are also in line to one of the objectives set in the Communication by the European commission "An EU Strategy for Youth-Investing and Empowering", to increase and improve efforts in providing the right skills for those jobs in demand

Τo support employability and allow early familiarization of young people to the world of work, thus strengthening their sense of empowerment and independence. Tο equip young workers, or potential workers, with professional skills and working experience and later promote their validation through the appropriate European instruments, e.g. the Europass, further enriching participants CVs and their sense of achievement. The choice of the gastronomy and food tourism economy sector is not random as it includes jobs in demand on the labor market: "For many of the world’s billions of tourists, gastronomy has become a central part of the tourism experience”, offering thus plenty of job opportunities. Activities like local food and wine production, festivals, and cooking classes are integrated into tourism portfolio. The food and beverage sector contributed a value added of €180.7 billion to the EU economy in 2022, an increase of 28.9% from 2021. The food and beverage subsector was responsible for 8.4 million jobs in the EU in 2022. These data indicated that further investing on human resources to be occupied in these activities, was an act of choice.

We raised awareness of the importance of gastronomy and local food cultures among key stakeholders. We developed training material for the promotion of the Mediterranean diet/cuisine as a means of increasing employment. Created two training modules for young aspirant food professionals: one on the principles of the Mediterranean diet and Food & Beverage regulations and a second focusing on Entrepreneurial skills so that participants can apply their culinary skills and knowledge on their own business. We created a training program (syllabus and curriculum/handbook) for potential students interested on the axis food-nutrition-gastronomy-tourism as well as for hospitality professionals, or interested to be professionals, on the background and practices of the Mediterranean diet and on entrepreneurial skills in gastronomy and food tourism. The two approaches combined gave and will further give to trainees a holistic view and practical experience of working within the gastronomy sector and will highly contribute to their employability and future career.

We carried out field and internet-based research, for existing training programmes in gastronomy tourism and entrepreneurship. We carried out research, asking students/young graduates, educators, entrepreneurs, relative stakeholders in each country to identify the training gaps and the exact needs our final materials should cover, to be as useful as possible. The findings were analyzed and shared. Based on the above, we created learning material for educators, officers and other stakeholders. In addition, we created a teacher's handbook to assist the tutors, students and other professionals and facilitators who will use the training materials. The ProEnGaT online platform created has two main functions: The first, being a website with information about the project's activities and information section that are used to generate interest and disseminate the project to a broad audience. The second is the training courses with numerous documents, exercises, interactive tools etc. that have been developed. The website and all the material were developed in all partner languages (FR, EL, IT, ESP) plus English. Participants and teachers move abroad (Italy) for pilot training on the project's materials.