From youth to work

Project summary: The 2015 EU Youth Report revealed that young people today are better educated than their predecessors and school completion rates are increasing in the EU. Yet, 8.7 million young people aged 15-29 are unemployed, 13.7 million are not in employment, education or training (NEETs) and close to 27 million are at risk of poverty or exclusion. Beside these statistical data based on overall population of youth, all 6 countries taking part in the project (Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Hungary and Italy) are facing with even more demanding issues when it comes to young people from foster families, migrant’s families (Italy and Greece) or coming from underprivileged areas or families. In this context, youth work is recognized as one of the possible useful approaches to tackle the abovementioned problems.

This project is aimed at improving practices in youth work in the fields of career and vocational guidance, supporting employability of youth, enhancing job search process and supporting transition from educational activities to labour market. This objective will contribute to improvement of youth work, recognition of relevant skills and knowledge needed for inclusive work with youth with less possibilities (NEET e.g.), development of relevant, both theory and practice based working materials and support development of transversal competencies, cross-national understanding and learning between partner organizations.

This will be achieved through development of three intellectual outputs:

O1: Needs analysis in order to obtain overview of regional, national and European successful practices including procedures, methodologies and tools in career and vocational guidance and support services in employment which will be basis for O2.

O2: Comprehensive training curriculum that will enable youth workers’ high quality and more structured work in area of career guidance and development of career management skills.

O3: Development of innovative online platform “Youth Portfolio” which will enable young people to have free access to it and to develop their personal digital online portfolio as a way of managing their own personal competencies. Young persons will be able to take part in a process of self-assessment, mapping their own qualities, competencies and relevant experiences either from past formal or non-formal experiences, enhance networking possibilities and improve their self-presentation in digital context.

Target group of this project are youth workers from 6 participating countries who will take part in producing new comprehensive curriculum for work in areas of career guidance and career management skills. 18 youth workers (3 from each participating countries) will in a collaborative way take part in joint staff training during which the curriculum will be tested, revised and mutual agreement on its features will be made. The youth workers that took part in the development of the training curriculum will implement national piloting of the materials with additional 24 youth workers per participating country (144 youth workers in total). This will enable them to use the training curriculum in their everyday work and to improve their skills and competences when working with youth in area of career management skills.

Besides the training curriculum, an innovative online platform “Youth Portfolio” will be developed to be used by young individuals for mapping their relevant skills, competences and experience (both formal and non-formal) in order to improve their employability and self-presentation in the labour market. The online platform will be also used as a digital training material and will be in line with the modules of the training curriculum.

The expected impact of this project, among others, is in area of: awareness rising of the importance of quality work of youth workers in the field of career and vocational guidance which leads to improvement in the quality of care for the young unemployed persons, especially those with fewer opportunities, increased recognition of the youth work, rising motivation of the youth workers to further develop personal transversal skills and competencies, transfer the project tools and methods to local NGOs working with youth, employment services, social welfare services, centres for youth, adopt good training models, materials and methods from other countries, giving proper support to unemployed youth in transition from education to labour market and independent life, using ICT tools to obtain better reach of youth in need for support and provide them with adequate tools in their job search process, career management skills and transition to labour market.

Transnational project meetings:

• 1st transnational meeting in Florence, Italy – September 2017
• 2nd transnational meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece – May/June 2018
• 3td transnational meeting in Porto, Portugal – November 2018
• 4th transnational meeting in Dombóvár, Hungary – July 2019

Joint staff training:

• Zagreb, Croatia, 3 people from each organisation (5 days) – December 2018

Final conference:

• Budapest, Hungary – July 2019