The internship is a bridge between study and work and facilitates professional choices through direct knowledge of the labour market.

An internship which has been carried out abroad is an added value on the CV. The managers of a company are strongly interested in recruiting who worked and acquired experiences abroad, rappresenting a resource due to his capability of speaking another language and showing flexibility, adaptability,autonomy, curiosity skills along with a mentality less bureaucratic and more pro-active.

The access to this type of experience is not equal for all students. There are students’categories who for different reasons are disadvantaged with regard to the majority of students. The disadvantages can have an economic nature or be determined by conditions of fragility and weakness due to particular physical and psychological conditions or by socio-relational factors such as for prisoners.

These disparities often prevent disadvantage subjects from doing an internship abroad. In these circumstances the VET Institution could build, in collaboration with the tutor and the student, a personalized training project, which foresees the realisation of a virtual.internship.

The need to tackle important logistical issues,(organization of the transfer and stay), but focusing its attention on the placement aspects, that has to be assessed accordingly to meet the needs, aspirations and training capabilities of the student.

Also such type of path represents, for many students, their first approach to the labour market: an experience carried out in a protected environment such as school, home or prison in connection with the host foreign company. A “gym” in which the trainees are challenged on the obligations and opportunities of a practical experience that can be, even if remotely implemented, highly stimulating and training in the view of real preparation for professional integration.

The importance of this internship is to promote, with the help of the virtual tutor and the company contact person, the design of a professional profile of the student, who with his own commitment can learn to combine study and work, give actual contribution to the hosting company.

Finally, the virtual internship is a concrete tool to improve equal opportunities in compliance with the principles of the non-discrimination and equal opportunities of the Erasmus + Program.