EUROsociAL, programme funde by European Union, and Colombia's National Planning Department (DNP), in collaboration with the COMPENSAR compensation fund and the San Buenaventura University of Medellín, held a seminar entitled “Assessing transversal competences in education and in occupational integration processes: experiences and open questions”.

Transversal competences have a positive impact on individual well-being and on people's capacity to cope with stressful situations, and they favour the development of cognitive skills. In childhood and adolescence, they play a fundamental role in helping people face the demands and challenges of life. In adulthood, they enhance the employability of the population in general, and that of the vulnerable population in particular, as well as its performance capabilities and participation in the labour market.

In Colombia, education programmes and those for social and occupational inclusion have been devoting growing attention to transversal competences, which are recognised as strategic components in their actions to fight poverty and social exclusion, and to strengthen social cohesion.

Various Colombian national programmes promote actions for strengthening transversal competences and, with this perspective, prioritise the creation of instruments for assessing them in order to establish baselines and improve the design of training proposals.

The seminar was introduced by Alejandro Gamboa Castilla, Director of the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation of Colombia (APC-Colombia); Nicolás Alvarado, Social Compensation Project Leader; Alejandra Corchuelo Marmolejo​, Director of Social Development at the National Planning Department of Colombia; Beatriz Marín Londoño, Dean of the Psychology Department of San Buenaventura University of Medellín; and Luigi Grando, Director of the CISP, EUROsociAL's Operational Partner.

Participants also included the Colombian institutions that are members of the Inter-Agency Committee on Transversal Competences:  National Planning Department; Social Prosperity Department; Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour; Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism; National Apprenticeship Service (SENA); Public Employment Service Unit; Colombian Institute for Family Welfare; Presidency of the Republic; among other entities.

The following participated as international speakers: Concetta Pastorelli, Lecturer in General Psychology at La Sapienza University of Rome and representative of the Scientific Council of the Interuniversity Centre for the Study of Development of Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviours (CIRMPA); María del Carmen Huerta, Analyst on the Education and Social Progress team of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); Paloma Vivaldi, international psychology expert at the CISP; Giovanni Maria Vecchio, Psychologist at Roma Tre University; Sofia Fernandes of the Directorate for Strategy and External Relations of Pôle Emploi; and Fernando Vargas of the Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training of the International Labour Organization ILO/CINTERFOR. Other participants included a delegation from Chile made up of civil servants from the National Training and Employment Service (SENCE), the Ministry of Education, and Chile Valora, and a delegation from Peru's Ministry of Education.

During the seminar, the results of application of the system for assessing transversal competences were presented in the context of the productive inclusion roadmap of the Social Prosperity Department (DPS). The system was created within the framework of EUROsociAL advising to various DPS programmes. In particular, its methodological structure was explained, and the data from its first official application was discussed.

The activity is part of the requests made by Colombia to the EUROsociAL Programme, in the Social Policies area, which is coordinated by the Italian-Latin American Institute (IILA) with the Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli (CISP) as its operational partner.