Context backgroundAs a modern and engaging trade school, we try to teach our student to become strong and responsible entrepreneurs. This aim presupposes excellent language and communication skills, a good knowledge of IT and an overall hands-on attitude to nurturing and evoking talents that could prove to be useful in the work place. Of course, all of these can be acquired in a Belgian context as well. However, we believe that our students will be more compelled to make use of these skills when they venture into the unknown. Abroad, our students will have no other choice but to put their multilingualism into practice. A proactive approach is the only way to deal with this new environment. An internship abroad will lead to insights and experiences that a local internship could not and will reinforce our students’ position in their later studies or work.With this project, our school will pioneer internationalization in the school community of Lier. Aims of the projectOur school will focus heavily on internationalization and will dedicate free hours to put together a supporting European team of teachers. As a trade school we want to take part in the renewal of our secondary education system. Each student is talented in his/her own way. We want to emphasize this to make them real entrepreneurs. We want every student who is willing to participate in an international project to be able to do so. We aim to use the results of this project to engage the entire school community as well, and encourage students and teachers to become active members in a European and international framework. This already happens since the school aims to start with project CLIL for the upcoming schoolyear. Students will be following several courses in English and French.Participants We want to offer 20 students of all fields (in their sixth - and last- year of technical secondary education or their seventh -and last- year of vocational education) the opportunity to serve an internship in a company in England, in addition to the internship in France (Nantes) and Spain (Sevilla) for 36 students. They get the chance to organize their work and free time to their own accord. As it is, we expect the students to organise cultural acitvities during the weekend to explore the town and the region where they will be staying. During the following years, we would like to expand this project as you can read in our European Development Plan.In our priority plan we want to focus mainly on the training of skills needed to function and thrive in an increasingly flexible labor market. These attitudes and competences will be an essential factor throughout the entire school curriculum. Planned activitiesDe project will be supported by a team in which each member has their own task (dossier, budget, internal and external communication, marketing and PR, press…). The leading partner in this venture will get a free hour to dedicate fully to the project. The people responsible will present this project to the students’ at the end of their fifth year. Students can choose whether they want to take part. Prospective participants are to apply (written and orally) and will be selected according to motivation and qualification. The chosen students will prepare this internship intensely over a longer period of time. Our current contacts and partner companies abroad have proven themselves to be very helpful over the last few years and will remain very important in this process. Results and impact from this programTime and time again, we have noticed the benefits from an internship abroad. It builds confidence and independency and prepares them excellently for higher education and professional life. All players in this project will be assessed and interviewed, both personally and online. We will digitalize these results and process them statistically. This will give us a convenient manual for colleagues within our school community ànd later generations who want to venture abroad. The results will also be communicated externally through press releases and study days. To optimalize the project we will screen the results in an objective way as we want our students to become real entrepreneurs. We are often contacted by former students of our school to help them with their Erasmus internship in college.http://sui.campussintursula.be/