As part of the Keep In Pact project, Cités des Sciences et de l’Industrie-Universcience organised a pilot training course aiming to provide new tools for partnership officers within the lifelong guidance community. The training focused on two modules of the training that was designed in the frame of the project. The objectives of this day were to test the content of these two modules and the associated facilitation techniques. Universcience designed this training using a collaborative approach.

The pilot training took place in person, at the Cité des métiers in Paris, on Monday 6 December. Although it was difficult to organise the event due to the current health situation; the exchanges were made possible through careful organisation and social distancing. Because of Covid and the constraints on everyone’s diary, not all the partnership officers from the Cités des métiers in Ile de France were able to attend. Nevertheless, the representation of three Cités des métiers enabled the participants to meet and discuss together. These exchanges focused on the training itself, the tools used by each representative, and the current processes in each Cité des métiers, as well as some theme-based projects.

The training was led by two partnership officers from the Cité des métiers de Paris. The event was attended by 10 beneficiaries representing 3 different Cités des métiers in the region of Paris.

For the training session, the modules chosen were module A “Developing and formalising new partnerships” and module C “Coordinating, managing and leading the partnership”. These two modules were very popular with the participants as they are the core of their work and learning new skills in those areas is always highly appreciated. The ice-breaker activities and group exercises helped to make the day more lively and encouraged friendly exchanges.

They particularly appreciated the use of the tools introduced during the training, whether digital (such as Trello for project management) or more traditional tools, like the action plan tool and the SWOT analysis tool. A group exercise, using the latter tool, allowed participants to analyse the internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as the external threats and opportunities of a potential project.

The pilot training was also an opportunity to identify some technical problems with the e-learning platform and get feedback on the modules.

Overall, the participants were very happy and enthusiastic about participating in the KEEP IN PACT pilot training. The time spent exchanging with other partnership officers gave them the opportunity to reflect on their professional practices, find answers to their problems and create working synergies between Cités des métiers.