The Latvian representatives have received a gold and a silver medal, as well as excellence prizes at the European biggest and most prestigious skills competition of young professionals EuroSkills 2010.
The competition took place from the 9th to the 12th December in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and Latvia was represented there by six professionals who demonstrated their skills and know-how in five professions. This year 500 participants from 27 countries representing 52 professions participated in the international competition.
In the hotel reception service specialists’ competition the gold medal was received by Linda Štāle who works at the hotel Hotel de Rome. The future mobile robotics technicians Bruno Bremmers and Kristaps Melderis from Riga Technical College received the silver medal. Both young professionals were on internship at the company Festo which is among the leading companies in the process automation industry, before the competition.
The waitress Baiba Īvāne from the restaurant Vincents and the cook Kārlis Mugins from the restaurant Bergs received the 5th prize in their group of professions in the competition of teams from 17 countries and also received the excellence prizes. In the competitions of the hospitality and cooking professions the jury evaluated the individual professionalism of each participant and the overall team result.
In the competition Latvia was also represented by the painter Kaspars Vītolnieks who is a 4th year student at Limbaži Vocational Secondary School and on internship at SIA "Rīgas daiļkrāsošanas darbnīca".
"The participation of Latvia at the competition this year has been very successful - out of six competitors three have returned home with medals! We are satisfied with this achievements and, of course, we are also thankful to the industry experts for their contribution in fine-tuning the skills of the young professionals. In many professions and skills Latvia is competitive in Europe from the point of view of both the vocational education offered in this country and the productive cooperation with companies in the fields of hotel service, construction and production of construction materials, metal processing and machine building, in particular, mechatronics and robotics. The excellent results at EuroSkills 2010 are attested not only by the received gold and silver prizes, but also by the overall performance of the Latvian team, i.e. from the point of view of the proportion of the received prizes Latvia was ranked the 10th out of 27 participating member states," Dita Traidās, the Director of the State Education Development Agency (VIAA) emphasises.
The competition EuroSkills is organised by the European professional skills development organisation "European Skills Promotion Organisation" and the participation of Latvia in the competition is coordinated by the VIAA. EuroSkills is an international skills competition where young professionals or students of vocational education establishments aged from 17 to 25 participate. At the competition the young professionals gain personal achievement and satisfaction and also present the quality of the vocational education of the country they represent. The first competition took place in the Netherlands in 1998 when the Latvian young professionals representing the profession of mechatronics technics from Riga Technical College were among the winners of the competition.
