
The MATES Project is part of a European drive called the New Skills Agenda, aimed at reducing the mismatch between the skills people are taught and the skills required to meet the needs of rapidly changing labour markets. The ‘Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills’ is just one of the ten actions in the New Skills Agenda and is a new framework for strategic cooperation in a given economic sector between key stakeholders; a key focus area for MATES.
The project, which more specifically addresses skill shortages in the offshore renewable energy sector and the ship building sector, is gaining momentum with five stakeholder workshops completed across Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, the UK and Spain. Project partners from CETMAR, ASIME, AQUATERA, and INDIGO Med also held a workshop at the European Maritime Day (EMD) conference on 1 June in Burgas, Bulgaria.
Workshop Moderator Rosa Fernández Otero, CETMAR, said “EMD provided MATES with an important opportunity to engage with key stakeholders from Europe’s maritime community and in particular, with professionals from the Black Sea region. The workshop focused on discussions around the identification of technological challenges and training needs within the sectors, on the stakeholders’ perception of these sectors and on the opportunities which can be gained from Ocean Literacy activities to improve the sectors’ image. The discussions facilitated the understanding of the situation and main trends in the Black Sea region. The findings, from all of the workshops which have taken place, will feed into a long-term strategy which will be developed by MATES for the offshore renewable energy and shipbuilding sectors.”
MATES partners have also been actively disseminating the project’s activities, with presentations made at FP Innova Exhibition in Santiago de Compostela, Spain on 25 April (available to watch here), and during NAVALIA, the International Shipbuilding Exhibition in Vigo, Spain on 24 May. The MATES consortium will produce several resources during the projects lifetime. One of these, the ‘Who is who’ directory of experts, will be launched soon. Further information on the project and activities will be available soon on this website.