The University of Alicante (UA) hosted 21 Filipino participants in the 5-day Training of Trainers 1: “Systems to Support Employability and Entrepreneurship” on March 21-25, 2022. This is under the Erasmus+ co-funded project, PATHWAY (Promoting the employability and entrepreneurship of Higher Education graduates through innovative ways in the Philippines). The participants representing the Philippine project partners are from the Ateneo De Manila University (AdMU), Lyceum of the Philippines University-Batangas (LPU-Batangas), Benguet State University (BSU), Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) and the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP). Participating online were representatives from St. Paul University Philippines (SPUP), Enactus Philippines and the Commission for Higher Education (CHED).  

Juan Llopis, Director of Institutional Relations and Projects of UA, together with PATHWAY Coordinator Cristina Beans, welcomed the participants.

The hybrid face-to-face and online training consisted of presentations by UA and the University of Montpelier (UM) staff on their respective universities’ best practices, strategies, and success stories in grooming and launching their students towards employment or entrepreneurship. The presentations were followed by workshops where the participants brainstormed on how their universities could explore collaboration, engage with relevant stakeholders, and bring the labor market to their campuses. The final workshop was the designing of an activity to bring together 100 students and 20 businesses at each partner university.

The face-to-face participants experienced Spanish culture by learning to make two variations of Arroz Alicantino, a type of paella typical in Alicante, at the Hestia Lucentum where they were guided by professional chefs. A walking tour of the Castillo de Santa Barbara and the Barrio de la Santa Cruz historic neighbourhood also oriented them about Alicante’s history.   

The training was capped with a management meeting in which future activities of the project were planned out.

The participants hoped that the ideas and practices they have drawn from the lectures, brainstorming sessions and workshops would help them train more entrepreneurs in the Philippines.

“As we admit, one of the things that we need to improve in our curriculum and even in our business market is the training of our students on how to be entrepreneurs so that they could have their own business and provide work opportunities for the Filipino people,” said Badillo Fredrick Castillo, LPUP’s VP for finance.  

Gerry Constantino of ECCP shared that PATHWAY is very important in bringing the business and academic sector closer. He said that industry is driven by a lot of new technologies that requires new skills so the two sectors need to work together to be able to deliver the right skills and appropriate expertise to fuel industrial development in the country.//JSTabangcura