Youth Employment Initiative

Background The idea of the Youth Employment Initiative project emerged from the desire of three European organizations to support young people’s success on the labor market through introducing supported employment services for vulnerable youth provided by youth coaches. The labor market situation in the partner organizations countries of Italy, North Macedonia and Romania is characterized by low economic activity and high unemployment rates. The current COVID 19 pandemic had and still has a serous influence on youth employment, particularly on employment of disadvantaged young people that leads to a higher unemployment rate and young people excluded from the labor market. The countries have been attempting to reduce unemployment, through policy creation and undertaking measures, while encouraging collaboration between institutions and NGOs emphasized that know-how transfer of actions can have a positive influence. The rationale of the Youth Employment Initiative project in terms of needs is the need for more decreasing unemployment rate among young people and necessity of employment services to support young people entering the labor market and create equal opportunities for young people with disabilities and/or disadvantaged young people. Objectives By implementing Youth Employment Initiative project, partner organizations wanted to give contribution to a more socio-economic, inclusive and sustainable society. YEI project was designed to provide support to young people – potential job-seekers to identify their skills and work preferences through offered individual support to be active into the labor market, to obtain and maintain the job by using an innovative and creative way of learning, thinking and reflecting. The other project objective was know-how transfer of actions aimed to equip the partner organizations with new methods and approaches by combining the creative context with the educational context in a non-common way. Implementing this project, partner organizations wanted to play a significant role in the promotion and development of employment opportunities for people with disabilities and people in social risk to access and stay in employment, and to offer services that can became an integral part of the methodologies used by professionals in their work with young people. Implementation During the project implementation period have been implemented following activities: 1. A report about state of youth coaching services based on the qualitative and quantitative data was prepared. The survey was prepared by the LAG AGRO LIDER, and conducted by all partner organizations. 2.Transnational meetings – During the project duration were held 3 (three) transnational meetings, face to face in each of the partner countries. 3.Short term joint staff training was conducted within the frame of YEI project. The activity was organized in 5 days training program that covered different topics related to youth employability. Additional online training in collaboration with Wien Work, Austria was conducted online, with aim to be shared good practices from Austria related to SE-services. 4.Training path for providing youth coaching and supported employment services for young people was developed and was used by the YEI project partner organizations in their work with young people. 5.Launch YEI project' website as a public accessible space for dissemination purpose, and updating it 6. A guideline of best practices occurred during the implementation period, training materials and experiences of all project partners was developed. Achievements -Prepared report as a structured document presenting factual information that included youngsters’ opinion about youth coaching services, followed by their opinion about importance of soft skills. -7 young coaches equipped with knowledge and skills to provide job coaching and supported employment services, and also to develop and deliver a short training program for future beneficiaries on soft skills development, career guidance topics and employment services. -Developed training path for providing youth coaching and supported employment services for young people. The training path was used by the YEI project partner organizations in their daily work with disadvantages young people. 84 young people were involved in training and coaching activities provided by YEI organizations. -Developed YEI Guidebook Supported Employment services for young people provided by youth coaches. The guidebook offers an overview of the supported employment services provided by youth coaches to any professionals working in the field of social inclusion and youth employability, interested in introducing and applying supported employment services in their work with young people. -Network of CSOs, business entities, public institutions is established