Y2Y is a 30 months project to be realized among Italy, Spain and Bulgaria. Partners are three Unions of Municipalities (through their Public Youth Departments) and a no profit organization specialized in LIFE SKILLS Education. The project will focus on one hand, on the improvement of skills of Public Youth Workers engaged in Youth Policies management and planning. Participants will be trained about targeted skills in order to better arrange activities and strategies addressed to young people as regard youth employability future. On the other hand, a blended mobility will be organized for young people (around 30 young people), during which specific business skills will be taught, by using both informal and formal techniques. The effort of Y2Y is thus mainly oriented to foster the inclusion and employability of young people with fewer opportunities (including NEETs) giving particular emphasis to young people at risk of marginalisation and young people with a migrant background, including newly arrived immigrants and young refugees; this last, is a social condition that Italy (mainly Sicily) is currently facing with, and Y2Y could represent a way to allow young refugees to feel welcome also thanks to their creative thinking, and not only hosted exclusively for humanitarian reason (sometimes becoming again prisoners inside the hosting communities). A similar feeling is daily felt in Spain, above in the Andalucian Region, where refugees from the North of Africa arrive by sea. Secondly, Y2Y includes activities that reinforce links between policy, research and practice. Indeed, a research activity will open the project, allowing for a more scientific based evidence structure of the next project phases. The political area is also considered, thanks to the involvement of the three Unions which members are Municipalities (so Authorities that at political level have a role in policies planning and execution). Finally, Y2Y aims to create a transnational youth area allowing groups of young people to express their creative thinking and secondly to arrive to the definition of specific ideas (business idea), thanks to the support of a coaching system offered during the virtual mobility period. After that, Y2Y will support these transnational youth groups in putting ideas into practice. Three multiplier events will allow the dissemination of the three Intellectual Outputs envisaged, while partners will meet formally three times (during the project life) in order to discuss in detail all project steps.
The Y2Y project, promoted by three Unions of Municipalities from three different EU countries and by an expert association in youth policies, has developed an operating model for strengthening youth entrepreneurship actions in rural and disadvantaged areas in Italy (Sicily), Bulgaria (Black Sea) and Spain (Andalusia). The project was aimed primarily at the youth population and more specifically at unemployed young people and outside the context of education and training (NEET), as well as youth workers of the Municipalities, or officials and operators of the Municipalities who are involved in various capacities from youth policies. The project created an operating model that follows the B2B model, inspired by the exchange and comparison between subjects operating on the same product. In this case, the exchange does not take place at the level of the Business, but at the level of the subjects concerned, or between young people, or young people and youth workers, in a constructive dialogue process based on the subject and personal variables, in this case the main life skills. The Y2Y model is a model that supports the individual resources of young people, especially creativity, resourcefulness, the capacity for self-realization, but also for "self marketing". If on the one hand it is true that young people are given the opportunity to highlight their ideas, on the other it is also true that what young people try to value is their ability to be in the European network and to propose and invent ideas . 14 young Europeans were offered a blended training model based on humanistic coaching and life skills and 18 youth workers a training course based on humanistic coaching. Through a service platform young people have promoted their entrepreneurial ideas and youth workers have supported the models proposed by the boys by supporting their communication and promotional choices. The Y2Y model is made available through an interactive platform which, in addition to welcoming innovative ideas and promoting them in the European network, offers the opportunity to take advantage of the contents of the training (webinars and short lessons), and the toolkits developed for use by the final target and all those who want to know and share the strategies tested.