9 October 2025
The final conference of the European project Digital International Trainers (DIGINT) was held on October 22 2025 in Bologna. In the historical building of Palazzo Leoni in the city centre, the premises of media library Giuseppe Guglielmi, 45 among trainer providers, VET experts, policy makers and teachers meet together for the presentation of the final project’s results and as an opportunity to share practices, open questions and new opportunities. The conference has been organised by ART-ER in collaboration with Regione Emilia-Romagna as part of the project’s activities.
The event was opened by Gabriele Marzano of the Emilia-Romagna regional authority and a first introduction to the project by Francesca Sorbi of CIS Gestione Impresa as project coordinator. The internationalisation theme was introduced by highlighting its relevance for the development of local economic and social ecosystems and the role of the DIGINT project in analysing the common key elements and different practices for stimulating training providers, policy makers and stakeholders to move further in the quality of VET.
In her remarks, Francesca Sorbi emphasized “how the value of the Digint project lies in its ability to guide organizations toward the internationalization of human resources and educational offerings, thereby strengthening and fostering innovation and change. The project has also enabled teachers and trainers to acquire international skills and mindsets to pass on to young people, enhancing their ability to navigate global contexts, seize new opportunities, and contribute to a more open and informed vision of the future.”
The keynote speech of Anna Barbieri (Team Leader for Apprenticeships and Erasmus+ Unit on Vocational Education and Training DG Employment, Social affairs and Inclusion) connected from Brussels introduced the European strategy of the Union of Skills framework, where the internationalisation of VET is crucial to support mobility, qualifications at European level and talent attraction and retention.
The core of the conference was dedicated to the presentation of key results of the project, with full collaboration of partners providing expertise and insights from the regions of Basque Country (Spain) Brabant area (Netherlands), Bucarest-Ilfov (Romania), Flanders (Belgium), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France) and Emilia-Romagna (Italy).
Increasing the quality of VET and learning opportunities, facing demographic challenges and providing better job and mobility opportunities, and supporting economic competitiveness are the layers where internationalisation can play its role. The objectives of the DIGINT project move in this direction by creating a set of professional tools to help training providers, teachers and decision makers to define and/or redefine their VET internationalisation strategies. Based on the multistakeholders’ knowledge and perspectives, the DIGINT partners presented main project’s outputs: the Benchmarking tool, The Competence framework, Training modules and Guidelines and the Blueprint process to support the VET internationalisation strategy at local level.
An interesting aspect of the internationalization of VET lies in its connection with the regional development strategy as a whole, and its capacity to play a relevant role in the Smart Specialisation Strategy and the innovation process. Comparing partners’ countries’ contexts and solutions, a variety of perspectives have been shared and the SWOT analysis provided some common learnings that can be useful for enhancing the capacity of local ecosystems. The collaboration among stakeholders, the attractiveness of the local environment and digitalisation can be key factors to face the bad effects of social and demographic crisis. Working together with the policy level to change the social perception of VET in the communication and collaboration with extra-EU countries and the exchange of learnings among the policy makers can help to identify new opportunities and solutions.
Looking at the impact of the DIGINT project, a relevant contribution came from the education expert Laura Londrillo and Marco Borioni of the Emilia-Romagna regional authority, whose accreditation system of local VET providers introduced internationalisation among the criteria. In this perspective, the DIGINT results have been recognised as a support to investigate the quality and guide the evolution of organisations’ internationalization strategies and, by focusing key factors for each provider, to help give back targeted information and design customized support actions.
A discussion session with participants and final remarks by Marina Silverii, Executive Director of ART-ER, completed the reflections on the project’s insights and impacts.
The DIG.INT project will be closed 30th of November 2025.