VETO - Vetovoimaa ja väyliä tekniikkaan

Shortage of skilled technical workforce is becoming a bottle neck of growth and internationalization for the industrial companies in the South Karelia region. Technical occupations and industrial sector are currently not among the top choices for young people, who prefer service oriented field of work. Part of this is due to the traditional image of industries, especially among women. At the same time automatization, robotization and smart production technologies have changed the industries remarkably. The smart specialization in the regional development program requires technical skilled workforce in the growth oriented companies in order to realize. Experts are needed especially for production, planning, maintenance and other similar jobs.

VETO project develops models and methods to increase the attractiveness of technical fields of study, targeting its

activities towards the potential applicants. Especially women and immigrants are in the focus groups, as they are

currently not represented in technical education as much as they could be. Also the project aims at building bridges to support the transfer between education levels and between education and industry.

The main activities in the project include marketing actions, which are co-developed with the target groups. They also include activation of communication and interaction between industrial organizations and the educational institutions offering professional technical education in the region. Based on the learnings from the activities, permanent models are defined to maintain the cooperation after the project.

The project is a joint project between LAB University of Applied Sciences and Saimaa Vocational Secondary

School Sampo. Also best practices and good experiences from earlier projects of similar topics will be utilized in VETO project.