The Men project faces the common challenge of increase the mobility of workers in the cross-border cooperation area between Italy and Malta, in order to increase and integrate the labor market, especially in areas of strategic interest in health and quality of life and environmental protection. The general objective of the project is to “foster the mobility of workers in the cross-border area through the creation of networks”. Among the main project outputs, the cooperation network set up between the ITS, Sicilian and Maltese schools, other public and private institutions and about 50 host companies in the cooperation area.

The web allows you to experiment permanently of the joint paths for the placement of young people, graduates / graduates and workers of the two islands through work placement internships and services to facilitate the meeting between job supply and demand. The project thus aims to fill the gap of joint cross-border career guidance and support services. In just a few months since its launch, according to plans and exceeding expectations, the project has employed over a hundred young people with educational and professional success.

The project thus develops and enhances a space "cross border” of training and employment in sectors of strategic importance for Europe, through the recognition of the experience of transnational mobility as a useful tool for qualification and job placement. This cross-border character can in fact be achieved exclusively with the cooperation between Italian and Maltese players in training, guidance and accompaniment to work and in the labor market. MEN, with its partnership, also contributes to increasing the sense of social cohesion and ease of professional movement in a wide and varied geographical context, yet incredibly close, given the small distance between Sicily and Malta, strategic islands in the center of the Mediterranean.

MEN constitutes a stable collaboration network among the multiple partners involved: public institutions, Sicilian and Maltese employment centres, schools, higher technical institutes, agencies, associative and private bodies of the labor market, for job mobility exchanges in the two islands, mainly in the sectors of safeguarding environment, sustainable tourism, blue economy, quality of life and health of citizens. Among the institutes involved, the Steve Jobs Technical Institute, the Technical Institute of Mobility and Transport Catania, the Archimede Technical Institute Syracuse and Itaca soc.coop. arl, a company specializing in the mobility of students and workers.

It also makes it possible to integrate the labor markets of the cross-border area, improve access for the populations of the two islands to innovative and technological guidance and support services for job placement, create connections between businesses and higher education centres. In this way, it enhances the integration of the Sicilian and Maltese market in order to increase employment and the exchange of skills and mobility of people between the two countries, constituting “a Mediterranean network of excellence”.