The EU suffers from a dramatic situation concerning unemployment, especially on young people, doubling unemployment rates for all ages. Such reality, added to the ramping poverty and inequalities figures, social segregation, the migration crisis and the rise of xenophobia in Europe is causing a race to the bottom regarding the pan-european solidarity and volunteering schemes. Further, unused youth work force difficults to find a solution regarding the EU problem, hampering the EU growth path. This set of conditions difficults the development of an optimal youth volunteer critical mass, as well as the development of the transversal, social and civic skills of the youngsteers. The EU cannot afford a weak and obsolete young volunteer performing deficient social actions on such key issues for Europe as poverty, migration or inclusion of minorities. In this context, the general objective of the EYESA project is to strengthen the role of the non-professional social work force (young volunteers), endowing these young people with the necessary high quality skills and tools to improve their social performance, as well as human competences, that would also enable them to undertake entrepreneurial activities, supporting new business creation in the social protection field. Another key aspect of the EYESA project is to better identify and manage the availability of required skills, competences and qualifications for our young volunteers, and to help preventing skills gaps and mismatches that could undermine the EU business competitiveness. Effective communication between the labour market and the education and training sector is vital even through volunteering programs. EYESA foresees training in basics, social, civic, transversal and digital skills, as the ability to learn and initiative-taking, that will help young volunteers to deal with today's varied and unpredictable career paths whilst solving the needs of the most deprived. Furthermore, the project will provide specific professional abilities to take into consideration concrete needs of main vulnerable target groups (economic migrants and refugees, Roma people, homelessness, hospitalized children, elderly, disable people, poor families, among others). To equip volunteers with high quality skills and tools, in a life-long learning process, will help to solve a number of issues, all fitting the European 2020 targets and strategies: 1) The already low awareness of youth volunteers work. 2) To prevent early school leaving, raising awareness amongst young people on the necessity of having adequately skilled work force to help them having a successful career and a social inprint. 3) To seize unused young workforce. 4) To generate transfers of knowledge in this field. 5) To improve social action and soften the EU civic life. For doing this, EYESA project activities and methodology are built around three Intellectual Outputs: 1) Self-evaluation tool (O1). 2) Curriculum and Skills-based Workshops (O2). 3) Collaborative portal of European young volunteers (O3). Summarizing, EYESA project is intended to improve the performance of young volunteers’ social action whilst providing them the necessary skills to: 1) To help them improve the performance of their social action. 2) To improve their employability. 3) To transform them into active members of the European society.
Nearly 100% of the population aged 15 are still at school. As the young grow older, there is a decrease in the proportion of them in education, while there is an increase in those on the labour market, whether it is employed or unemployed. In fact, more than 3.3 million young people (aged 15-24 years) were unemployed in Europe in 2019. Although the rate has decreased from 24% in 2013 to less than 15% in 2019, the youth unemployment rate is still remarkably high in the EU, and more than double the overall unemployment rate (less than 7%). But still with big differences between countries, because the youth unemployment rate is still much higher and even spiking in some Mediterranean countries. The levels of youth unemployment and inactivity are largely influenced by the economy but can also be due to other issues related to education, training, segmentation of the labour market, or even public services not tailored to the most vulnerable, including young people. High joblessness among young people represents a considerable loss of productive capacity that may lead to poverty and social exclusion throughout their lifetime. With the aim to tackle all these issues through strengthening the role of the non-professional social workforce, such as young volunteers, eight organisations from seven EU countries decided to join forces in the EYESA project. The main objective of the project was to develop certain skills and provide young people with tools that can help them improve their social performance, including undertaking entrepreneurial activities and contribute to increasing their employability. The EYESA activities follow a three-step approach: - Identify key skills - Analyse the skill gaps - Provide different tools to reduce those gaps EYESA project activities and methodology were built around three Intellectual Outputs. 1. Development of the Self-evaluation Tool (IO1). Although this activity was not finally funded under this ERASMUS+ grant, partners managed to develop it with their own resources. - Distribution of topics among partners: Basic social skills, Communication skills, Organisational skills, Creativity/proactivity, Entrepreneurship, Negotiation skills, Digital skills, and Team-building skills. - Preparation of questionnaire (all partners prepared a set of questions for the topic assigned). - Translation of the questionnaire into all partners’ languages. - Testing of the self-evaluation tool (over 200 replies). - Final report, including conclusions and recommendations. 2. The curriculum and Skills-based Workshops. Once the key skills and the main gaps among young volunteers were identified, partners worked on the development of a curriculum to fill all these gaps to improve their social performance, and also the methodology to implement it in workshops. A) CURRICULUM The development of the curriculum was coordinated by FBI although each partner was responsible for one thematic chapter. The Curriculum-Handbook provides a broad range of useful skills to improve the performance in social action and employability and to support empowerment into active membership of the European society. The curriculum was written in English and translated into all the partners' languages. B) SKILLS-BASED WORKSHOPS Afterward, LEB developed an innovative learning methodology to implement the curriculum in workshops in all countries in a similar way to test it. The methodology was written in English and translated into all the partners' languages. The tool contains: • A Workshop Agenda proposal with time and topic distribution • Methods for each module (one per topic) • A collection of Icebreaker, energizer, and feedback methods • Material for implementation • Additional E-Learning and Material Partners organised 7 workshops based on the EYESA curriculum with around 100 participants. 3. The collaborative portal It was coordinated by eShop with the aim to provide open tools and resources to enable young volunteers to exchange experiences, contents, and approaches in the field of volunteering. 127 posts - 1445 entries at the end of the project. In addition to the intellectual outputs, partners have held 4 transnational meetings with 59 participants in Sevilla (Spain), Innsbruck (Austria), Weimar (Germany) and Ljubljana (Slovenia) and organised 7 multiplier events to present main project results and outputs with more than 230 participants. The impact of EYESA project on direct participants has been: - An increase in personal and entrepreneurial skills and of their employability. - Sense of belonging to the EU. - Improved curriculum. - Practical experience: learning by doing. - Recognition of their skills or information about how to do it. Participating organisations have learnt from each other and widened their links with other local and regional organisations working in the same field of activity. In the medium or long-term partners will keep on using the material produced in EYESA project.