Between June and September 2022, the CLUSTER project partners organised Regional Focus Groups to discuss the upcoming trainee-oriented catalogue of new curricula. The catalogue will help improve the employability skills of youth and women in the Mediterranean. It aims to bring job opportunities to them and reduce the mismatch between labor market demands and young people’s skills.

A Focus Group is a qualitative research technique used to collect data through group interaction. Thanks to the feedback received through this participatory process, a catalogue of new curricula in the four Sustainable Economy sectors targeted by the project, namely Aquaponics, Hydroponics, Food Processing and Sustainable Food Security could be developed.

The Focus Groups have been held in the Mediterranean countries where the project is being implemented. They gathered relevant stakeholders, such as public authorities, TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) institutions, business operators such as SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), in addition to specialized experts and researchers operating in the project’s respective regions.

As a result of these meetings, Focus Group Discussion Reports were produced, which can be found below:

• Spain
• Cyprus
• France
• Palestine
• Tunisia

This series of Focus Group Discussions constituted the first stage of reviewing the final design of the trainee-oriented catalogue, and was followed by a Cross-border Workshop held in Amman, Jordan in July 2022, which led to the fine-tuning of an inclusive catalogue.