Chambre de métiers et de l'artisanat de région Occitanie, Pyrénées-Méditerranée

The Chamber of Craft and Small Businesses of Occitania Region (CMAR) is a public institution. Its headquarters are located in the suburbs of Toulouse. CMAR has 1250 employees in the headquarters and in the 13 local offices in the region. Its mission is to support and accompany small businesses in their development and competitiveness. To do so, we propose economic programs, financial support and also training courses for apprentices, craftmen, job applicants, people who want to create their business… As said, one of our main activity is to train apprentices. Each year around 8 500 apprentices follow different cursus in our local offices such as bakery, cooking, hairdressing, car mechanic, construction floristery... Apprentices are aged 16 to 30 years old. During their cursus they can do internships in European companies with the support of the Erasmus+ program. The benefits are important: to develop professional and personal skills, to open the apprentices to other cultures and languages, to enlarge their job opportunities, to acquire autonomy… However, for a huge part of them, Europe and its opportunities remain far from them. A large majority of them has never taken a plane. Our apprentices aren’t keen on foreign languages too. Having contacts with European volunteers can then be a good opportunity for our apprentices to open their mind to cultural and linguistic diversity, to learn other languages and taste the European diversity.