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.
Implementation of the project From Youth to Work has led to improved practices in youth work in areas of vocational guidance and career counselling by developing three intellectual outputs. Area of career counselling and vocational guidance is a multi-sectorial type of social service where knowledge transfer and exchange of experience are crucial for development of skills of practitioners in that area. Therefore, in order to obtain the relevant national overview on the specific needs of practitioners in area of career and vocational guidance, comprehensive needs analysis was undertaken in the frame of IO1. As a phase 1 of the IO1 development, each partner organisation provided comprehensive data on the national background of the career guidance systems in their countries, possibilities for youth with special focus on practices of employment offices, vocational guidance centres (if applicable), guidance systems within educational systems and NGOs programs for supporting unemployed youth, especially those for NEET and other underprivileged groups. The desk research part of the IO1 report was concluded with the overview on networking between different stakeholders and examples of best practices in each participating country in supporting unemployed youth. The phase 2 of the IO1 development consisted of the implementation of empirical study by application of 92 semi-structured interviews (min.15 per country) among the practitioners in area of career and vocational guidance. This undertaking resulted in collecting data on the professional needs for competences and potential obstacles and difficulties in their everyday work as well as the crucial points for further development of the skills in this area. The collected data provided the solid foundation upon which the content for the IO2 – training curriculum was further developed. Further contribution to development of high-quality youth practices and providing support for youth workers in area of career and vocational guidance was established through development of the intellectual output 2 – comprehensive training curriculum. The training curriculum was jointly developed by 5 partners and piloted in local environments. It is intended to be used by various target groups such as youth workers in youth centres, job clubs, practitioners from social care system (youth in children homes or foster care system), national employment service offices, career counsellors in vocational and other types of schools. The training curriculum is designed in modular format with 5 moduls, each of the modules can be used separately. First module stands out as an introductory theoretical overview (Effective approach toward youth). Second (Effective self-assessment and job research process), third (High quality job search tools) and fourth module (Appropriate communication and self-presentation) provide highly structured and interactive learning units that provides knowledge, tools and approaches in areas of career development, self-assessment, job search tools and appropriate communication and self-presentation. The fifth module provides a broader context by which youth workers, by using various proposed tools can guide young people to use the capacities of the local communities in developing their own projects, finding solutions for encountered problems etc. In order to further support employability of youth and support transition from educational activities to labour market, an innovative online platform – Youth portfolio was developed under the scope of the IO3. The Online platform "Youth portfolio" is designed in a way that enables any young individual to develop its personal digital portfolio as a way of managing its own personal competencies. Young person is enabled to take part in a process of self-assessment, mapping its own qualities, competencies and relevant experiences either from past formal or non-formal experiences. Youth workers can also use the online platform during the implementation of developed training curriculum as a practical tool through which objectives of training curriculum can be achieved. Beside the concrete, extensively developed intellectual outputs that are the core achievement of this project, it is important to acknowledge the multisectoral nature of the project that facilitated opportunities to cooperation of relevant stakeholders from different backgrounds: public sector, civil society organisations, youth organisations, academic sector, local government representatives etc. In terms of the partnership consortium, organisations had the immense opportunity to improve their knowledge and competences in area of career and vocational guidance and are able to directly foster the exploitation of the project results due to their numerous projects and specificities of the target groups working with in their everyday professional life (e.g. migrant population, unaccompanied minors, care leavers or youth in care system, long-term unemployed, etc.).